A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

ИСТОРИЯ АНГЛИЙСКОГО ЯЗЫКА

БИШКЕК 2019
 PREFACE

This lecture on the History of the English language is intended for students of
English Department. It consists of two parts: the first part deals with the discussion
of some theoretical aspects of language evolution, a short description of the
Germanic languages a brief survey of the history of English and a description of
the language in the Old English period. The description is based on three periods;
every period is described separately, so as to show their uninterrupted evolution
and gradual transition from Old English to Modern English. The concepts Old and
Middle English are so ingrained that it would make the sense easier for the reader.
It may be also interesting for all readers to account for the features of Modern
English from a historical point of view.

The strategy involves the traditional framework of Old, Middle and Modern
English in favor of a more flexible format for the book as a whole.

According to the new program of training specialists there are following set of
lectures.

1. What is a History of English.

2. General characteristics of Germanic languages.

3. Old English and Linguistic situation

4. Middle English and Linguistic situation

5. Establishment of British Standard

6. English language in present day

The second part is accompanied additional exercises for practical tasks for
discussion in class. There are authentic text of the appropriate historical period
from the point of view of its phonetic, grammar and etymological features.
CONTENTS

PART I.

1. What is a history of English? . . . .

2.. Indo-European family . . . .

a.Catem Branch. b.Centum Branch

3. The Germanic languages. . . . .

4. Beginning of English. . . . . .

5. The Anglo-Saxon invaders. . . . .

6.Linguistic situation in Old English. . . .

OE dialects. Written records and alphabet.

OE phonetics.

7. OE Grammar. . . . . . .

8.Christianity and the Golden Age. . . .

9. The Scandinavians. . . . . .

10. The Norman Conquest. . . . .

11.Middle English. . . . . . .

Borrowings.

12. The Age of Grammarians. . . .

13.Development of the National English Language .

14.Establishment of English Standard. . .

15-16.English in the 19th and 20 centuries. . .

PART II . . . . . . . .

Bibliography. . . . . . .
PART I.

WHAT IS A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE?

A language can be considered from different angles. In studying Modern English

we regard the languages as fixed in time and describe each linguistic level –
phonetics, grammar or lexis – synchronically, taking no account of the origin of
present-day features or their tendencies to change. The synchronic approach can be
contrasted to the diachronic. When considered diachronically, every linguistic fact
is interpreted as a stage or step in the never-ending evolution of language.

Through learning the history of the English language the student achieves a variety
of aims both theoretical and practical. The history of English language is of
considerable interest to all students of English, since the English language of today
reflects many centuries of development One of the aims of this course is to provide
the student with a knowledge of linguistic history.

To many people it might seem a relatively straightforward matter to write a history

of the English language, for one simply starts at the beginning and carries through
until the modern day. A history of the English language does raise the questions of
what one means by ‘English’ and what a history of it should seek to accomplish.
Let us consider the first of these questions. To most people today ‘English’
indicates the variety of the language known as Standard English – a variety
characterized by the written form which is highly regulated. Consequently, a
history of the English language might be thought to explain how Standard English
arose and has developed since then. In addition to this standard there are many
varieties of English. In England there are numerous regional dialects, both rural
and urban. There are also varieties found in Wales, Scotland and Ireland. When
one looks abroad one finds a whole range of other English.

Each speaker of English has a number of different registers or forms of the

language which are used for various social occasions. The English one uses for an
interview will differ in vocabulary, pronunciation and syntax from the English that
person might use in a more intimate social situation. It is clear that a history of
English could not encompass the development of all varieties and registers of the
language which have existed and which still exist. Knowledge of a language before
the development of tape-recorders has to be-gained from written sources and this
makes writing of paramount importance to our understanding of the history. This
point is worth emphasizing because today linguists claim that speech is the primary
medium of language and that writing is a development from speech. The
possibility of asking for clarification in a face-to-face conversation is not available
in writing and so different structures need to be employed to minimize the risk of
misunderstanding. Often it will appear as though writing makes periodic
adjustments to catch up with the development of the spoken language, particularly
in pronunciation. Writing becomes fully standardized and ceases to change to
reflect developments in pronunciation changes in the latter must be detected by
other means than through changes in the writing system.

The other questions raised at the beginning of this chapter was what a history
devoted to the English language should contain. As already suggested it cannot
contain details of the history of all the varieties which generally go under the
umbrella description of Engli8sh today.

Traditionally histories of the English language have divided their account into
three major periods: Old English, Middle English and Modern English. The Last
period is sometimes divided into two to give Early Modern English and Late
Modern English. The reasons for this division are as much political as Linguistic.
Old differs from Middle English in that the Norman Conquest of 1066 introduced
new settlers who spoke a variety of Old French and thus changed the nature of
English. But there was an equal important series of invasions by Scandinavians
(the so-called Viking invasions and settlements) from the end to the eighth century
onwards, though this has not contributed to a similar division of the language by
modern historians. Middle English differs from Early Modern English, and the
transition from one to the other is traditionally dated at 1485 when the Tudors
replaced the Yolkiest after the Battle of Bosworth. Both 1066 and 1485 are
political dates whose familiarity has forced historians of the language to accept
them as significant for the development of the language as well. Most people have
heard of the Anglo-Saxons and probably recognize that the medieval period came
to an end in the fifteenth century; they do not find it difficult to accept that a
history of the language should reflect these important political changes. There are
many possible political events such as the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 or
purely arbitrary daters such as 1700 which have been put forward as marking this
transition. Although politics and language are closely related and we should
consider the possible linguistic reasons for thinking of historical periods in the
language. Changes in the language cannot be dated so specifically that we can use
them to provide precise dates for the end of one period and the beginning of
another. The leveling of inflections has been dated anywhere between
approximately 900 and 1200. It all depends on what data are used and which texts
are selected to provide the evidence. In view of the considerations outlined above
this book divides the history of English into episodes which more accurately reflect
the shifting attitudes to and developments in the language.

The Norman Conquest created a new situation as many of the officers of church
and state were no longer English or English-speaking. Three languages became
available for use in England: Latin, French and English. Some changes were in
phonemic system without help from any descriptions of how sounds were made at
the time. The sounds in English were represented by Latin letters and we know
from other sources what the rough phonetic representations of these letters were
and can naturally assume that the English sounds must have been those that were
similar to the sounds represented by these Latin letters in Latin and other
languages. They worked to reform English spelling on the basis of pronunciation
which are found from the sixteenth century onwards. The history of English
pronunciation can never take account of the pronunciations of all individual users
of the language. Naturally changes in the writing system itself often provide clues
as to what has happened in the development of sounds in the language, because
new writing systems will tend to bear more relation to current pronunciation.

About 1400 the importance of French and Latin began to wane and the need for a
new English in the country emerged. The period from 1400 to 1660 was concerned
with the establishment of a written standard throughout the country. This period
was much more concerned with the regulation of the language and produced
numerous books and pamphlets about what was ‘correct’ English. This is the age
which saw the rise of the dictionary culminating in Dr. Johnson’s dictionary of
1755. This was also the age when grammars were produced with elaborate rules
for what was acceptable usage in English syntax. From the fifteenth century
writing in English becomes increasingly common. The introduction of printing
means that published work increasingly reflects the tendency towards changes in
spelling.

The next period we shall consider covers mainly the nineteenth century. It is an age
of great imperial expansion which saw many young men from Britain going
overseas to administer distant lands to bring their inhabitants the benefits of British
civilization. The language had to be regulated in order to serve as an administrative
vehicle for the empire as a whole so that the English of India could be the same as
the English of Jamaica. It was in theory though the practice was naturally different
New words and new pronunciation were characteristic of different parts of the
empire and many people were influenced by them.

It is also important to note that significant changes took place in the study of
language itself. Two aspects may be highlighted. Firstly, the previous age had been
concerned with regulating language on the assumption that all languages followed
the same structure. Secondly, the nineteenth century saw an enormous growth in
the historical study of language. Many of the changes in English were discovered
in the nineteenth century. The development of the concept of a family tree for
languages and the recognition that English was a Germanic language which
belonged to the Proto-Indo-European family of languages.

The last period of the history of the language extends from 1914 to the present day.
From this period there are numerous books and discussions about various aspects
of the English language. This period contains books about syntax and grammar,
spelling lists and ever more comprehensive dictionaries.

Those are periods into which the history of the English language divide in this
book. A history of the language must cover not only the changes within the
elements which make up a sentence - the sounds, the inflections, the vocabulary
and the syntax – but also the wider changes which are reflected in attitudes to the
language and how the language is used for literary and other purposes.

2. THE INDO-EUROPEAN FAMILY

It is generally supposed nowadays that the original home of the Indo-European

people was somewhere in the middle of eastern languages have common words for
winter and snow, but not for sea or mountain. It is safe to suppose that these people
originated in a flat inland region that was cold in winter. There is a common word
for honey, and the honey-bee is found throughout Europe but not in the areas of
Asia that have been suggested as a possible homeland. There are also common
words for oak, beech, pine, wolf, mouse, dog, pig, sheep, night, star, eye, tooth,
father, mother, brother, sister. Pronouns and numerals also indicate their common
origin.

At the time of their dispersal about 5000 years ago, they were a Neolithic people
with a limited knowledge of how to work copper. Although partly nomadic, some
had settled homes and practiced primitive methods of agriculture. They ploughed
the land and raised crops; they reared cattle and sheep; they spun and wove wool.
Their society was patriarchal with some kind of chief or king, and they believed in
several gods.

About the year 3000 B.C. the Indo-European people began to disperse, moving in
what was probably a series of waves throughout Europe and eastwards into Iran
and India. As documents discovered earlier this century show, some of them even
reached Sinkiang in China. There are no written records of a common Indo-
European language. The earliest writings of the family are in Hittite, Greek and
Sanskrit. Hittite is an extinct language. In 1952 clay tables was found, it put back
the date of the earliest recorded Greek by several centuries, before the fall of Troy,
possibly as early as 1500 B.C.. So Hittite and Greek now rival Sanskrit as the most
ancient recorded Indo-European languages. Sanskrit is the language of the Vedas
or sacred books of India. It survives as a sacred language rather Latin did in the
Rome Catholic Church.

Sanskrit was very important in early linguistic studies. Sir William Jones a
dedicated amateur linguist began to study Sanskrit, and amazed to find parallels
between this remote language and the Classical languages. He compared Sanskrit
to Latin and Greek ‘to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs
and in the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident’.
He also suggested that Persian, Germanic and Celtic were linked to the other three.

Later scholar pursued these studies further and were able to formulate phonetic
‘rules’ for sound changes that consistently occurred and thus demonstrate
connections between words.

In the early 19th century a Dannish scholar, Rask, first pointed out certain
correspondences in Indo-European languages between the voiceless plosive /p/, /t/,
/k/, and voiceless fricatives /f/, /O/, /h/; voiced plosives /b/, /d/, /g/, and voiceless
plosives /p/, /t/, /k/; aspirated voiced plosives /bh/, /dh/, /gh/ and unaspirated
plosives /b/, /d/, /g/.

In 1822 his German contemporary, Jakob Grimm, who is generally better known
for his collection of fairy tales, applied these observations to all the Germanic
languages. He noted that the original Indo-European sound was kept in Latin and
Greek, but changed in the Germanic languages between 600 and 100 B.C. He then
formulated the principle known as Grimm’s Law or the First Consonant Shift. If
we apply it to English the correspondences can be seen in the following words:

Latin English Latin English

pater father frater brother

tres three dha(Sanskrit) do

centum hundred hostis guest

There was an early division into two branches according to certain changes in
initial consonants. In the east an initial plosive /k/ was changed into a sibilant /s/,
whereas in the west the plosive was retained. The former is known as the ‘satem’
branch from the Avestan word for a hundred, the latter as the ‘centum’ branch
from the Latin word for a ‘hundred’

• Satem Branch

1. Indic

The oldest language of the Indic group is Sanskrit. It survives only as a religious
language, but it has a number of descendants spoken in northern India, Pakistan
and Bangladesh by about six hundred million people. These are very similar
languages both derived from Hindustani, but the latter shows the influence of
Persian and Arabic on the vocabulary and uses a Perso-Arabic script. It is also
worth noting that Romany is basically a dialect of north-west India, which from
about 500 B.C. was carried west by wandering gipsy tribes and has borrowed
extensively from other languages.

2. Iranian

which the Zoroastrian scriptures were written. The language spoken today contains
a considerable number of words from Arabic.It is spoken not only in Iran but
among some Moslems in Pakistan and India. Related languages are Afgan,
Beluchi, Tadjik and Kurdish.

3. Armenian

This group now consists of just one member. Armenian is spoken by only about
four million people in the south Caucasus, but it is a vigorous language that shows
different features from other Indo-European languages and must be classed
separately. It has a considerable literature dating from a 5th century translation of
the Bible. Possible the languages of the Trojans and the Macedonians were related
to Armenian.

4. Albanian

This is the smallest group in the Indo-European family, spoken by fewer than two
million people. There is no written record before the 15th century and no literature
before the 17th, and as the present vocabulary is so mixed with Latin, Greek, Slav
and Turkish. It is very difficult to isolate the original language.

5. Hittite
The Hittites lived in the second millennium B.C. in what is now

Turkey. In 1915 a Czech archeologist discovered a large number of clay tables

which turned out to be the archives of the Hittite empire. Dated around 1500 B.C.
they are among the oldest recorded forms of any Indo-European language, and this
discovery led to considerable linguistic progress. Analysis of the language
confirmed a theory put forward by Ferdinand de Suassure in 1879. He had
suggested that in Indo-European there were no long vowels that these developed
later from a short vowel followed by a laryngeal consonant. The forms of ancient
Hittite proved his theory to be correct.

6. Balto – Slavonic

This group covers a vast area in eastern Europe. It is divided into two unequal sub-
groups, the very small Baltic one, and the very large Slavonic one.

A. Baltic

Prussian; 2. Latvian; 3. Lithuanian.

B. Slavonic

East Slavonic: (a.Russian, b.White Russian or Byelorussian;

c. Ukrainian);

West Slavonic: (a.Polish, b.Czech, c.Slovak, d.Sorbian)

South Slavonic: (a .Bulgarian, b.Slovenian, c.Serbo-Croat,

d. Macedonian)

• Centum Branch

1. Tokharian

Early this century some fragmentary texts of an Indo-European language were

found in Chinese Turkestan, and were given the name Tokharian. This discovery is
very important as the language belongs to the ‘centum’ branch, not to the eastern
‘satem’ branch, as might be expected. This must be the result of a very early
migration eastwards.

2. Greek
It is one of the three great ancient languages of the Indo-European family. Ancient
Greece had profound effect on the western world. In its Golden Age in the 4th and
5th centuries B.C. Greece boasted the greatest philosophers, dramatists, historians
and orators. Up to the 3rd century A.D. Greek was the international language of the
eastern Mediterranean. Classical Greek remains a tresure-house of words which we
still plunder today.

3. Italic

The most important Italic language is Latin. As Rome eclipsed Greece, Latin
replaced Greek as the language of the Ancient World. It remained the international
medium of communication among educated people until well into the 17th century,
and the language of the Catholic church. Latin has five great national languages.

1. Italian. 2. Spanish. 3. Portuguese. 4. French. 5. Romanian

4. Celtic

At one time the Celtic people covered the greater part of western Europe. Only
four Celtic languages still survive.

P-Celtic or Cymric includes Welsh and Breton. Breton was taken to north-west
France by the Cornish in the 5th and 6th centuries, but Cornish itself died out in
the 18th century.

Q-Celtic or Gaelic includes Irish Gaelic, or Erse, and Scots Gaelic, brought to the
Scottish Highlands from Ireland in the 5th century Another Manx survived in the
Isle of Man until its last speakers died in the 1960s.

Despite attempts by nationalists in Ireland and Wales to make Erse and Welsh
respectively the medium of instruction in schools, they are very much minority
languages, and speakers must also know English to survive in the modern world.
This important branch of the Indo-European family will die out in the not too
distant future.

5. Germanic

There is no written record of the Common Germanic ancestor of this group. There
were three branches, though one has now become extinct.
1. East Germanic

a) Gothic; b) Vandal, now extinct; c) Burgundian, now extinct.

2. North Germanic

a) Icelandic; b) Norwegian; c) Danish; d) Swedish.

3. West Germanic

This is the most important branch as it includes three regional languages, Flemish,
Frisian and Plattdeutsch. One national language of lesser importance, Dutch and
two great international languages German and English

a) Dutch. A variety of Low German. In Europe it is confined to Holland, but it

has given rise to Afrikaans in South Africa.

b) German. Modern German is descended from Old High German. Today

German is spoken in Germany, Austria, and a large parts of Switzerland, and there
are German-speaking communities in North America and southern Africa. It is the
most conservative language of the West Germanic group.

c) English. Although basically a West Germanic language, the vocabulary of

English is half Romance, and it has many unique features of grammar. It has
become the most wide-spread language in the world.

3. THE GERMANIC LANGUAGES

The history of the Germanic group begins with the appearance of what known as
the Proto-Germanic language. Proto-Germanic is the linguistic ancestor or the
parent-language of the Germanic group. It is supposed to have split from related
Indo-European tongues between the 15th and 10th c. B.C. The Indo-Europeans
extended over a larger territory, the ancient Germans moved further north than
other tribes and settled on the southern coast of the Baltic Sea. Proto-Germanic is
entirely pre-historical language: it was never recorded in written form. It was
reconstructed by the methods of comparative linguistics from written evidence in
descendant languages.

It is believed that at earliest stages of history Proto-Germanic was fundamentally

one language, though dialectally coloured. In its later stages dialectal differences
grew, and at the beginning of our era Germanic divided into dialectal groups and
tribal dialects. Dialectal differentiation increased with the migrations and
geographical expansion of the Teutons. The Teutons had extended over a larger
territory and the Proto-Germanic languages broke into parts The tri-partite division
of the Germanic languages proposed by 19th c. philologists. According to this
division Proto-Germanic split into three branches: East Germanic, North
Germanic, West Germanic.

East Germanic

The East Germanic subgroup was formed by the tribes who returned from
Scandinavia at the beginning of our era. The most numerous and powerful of them
were the Goths. They were among the first Teutons to leave the coast of the Baltic
Sea and start on their great migrations. The eastern Goths, Ostrogot consolidated
into a powerful tribal alliance in the lower of the Dniester. They were subjugated
by the Huns under Atilla and set up a kingdom in Northern Italy with the capital
Ravenna.

The short-lived flourishing of Ostrogothic culture in the 5th – 6th c. under came to
an end with the fall of the kingdom. The Gothic language now dead. The Goths
were the first of the Teutons to become Christian.

The other East Germanic languages all of which are now dead have left no written
traces. Some of their tribal names have survived in place-names, which reveal the
directions of their migration: Burgundy derived from Burgundians; Andalusia
derived from Vandals; Lombardy derived from Longobards.

North Germanic

The North Germanic subgroup of languages. The North Germanic tribes lived on
the southern coast of the Scandinavian peninsula. They did not participate in the
migrations and were relatively isolated. The speech of the North Germanic tribes
was a sort of common North Germanic parent-language called Old Norse or Old
Scandinavian. It has come down to us in runic inscriptions. Runic inscription were
carved on objects made of hard material in an original Germanic alphabet known
as the runic alphabet or the runes The runes were used by North and West
Germanic tribes. In the peninsular there were three kingdoms constantly fought for
dominance and the relative position of the three languages. The earliest written
records in Old Danish, Old Norwegian and Old Swedish date from 13th century.
In addition to the three languages on the mainland the North Germanic subgroup
includes two more languages: Icelandic and Faroese whose origin goes back to the
Viking Age.

Linguistically in most areas of their expansion, the Scandinavian settlers were

assimilated by the native population: in France they adopted the French language;
in Northern England, in Ireland and other islands around the British Isles sooner or
later the Scandinavian dialects were displaced by English. In the Faroese Islands
the West Norwegian dialects brought by the Scandinavians developed into a
separate language called Faroese.

Faroese is spoken nowadays by about 30000 people or less.. As compared with

other North Germanic languages Icelandic has retained a more archaic vocabulary
and grammatical system.

West Germanic

At the beginning of our era West Germanic tribes lived in the lowland between the
Oder and the Elbe. On the eve of their “great migrations” the West Germans
included several tribes. The Franconians (or Franks) were divided into three: Low,
Middle and High Franks spread up the Rhine.

The Angles and the Frisians , the Jutes and the Saxons inhabited the coastal area of
the modern Netherlands. A group of tribes known as High Germans lived in the
mountainous southern regions of the Federal Republic of Germany. The
Franconian dialects were spoken in the extreme North of the Empire; in the later
Middle Ages they developed into Dutch – the language of Low Countries and
Flemish – the language of Flanders.

The modern language of the Netherlands, formerly called Dutch and its variant in
Belgium, known as the Flemish dialect The High German group of tribes did not
go far in their migrations. Together with Saxons Bavarians and Thuringians
expanded east, driving the Slavonic tribes from places of their early settlement
Another offshoot of High German is Yiddish. It grew from the High German
dialects which were adopted by numerous Jewish communities spread over
Germany. These dialects blended with elements of Hebrew and Slavonic and
developed into a separate West Germanic language with a spoken and literary
form.
In the 5th centuries a group of West Germanic tribes started on their invasion of
the British Isles. The invaders came from the lowlands near the North Sea: the
Angles, part of the Saxons and Frisians, the Jutes.

All the Germanic languages of the past and present have common linguistic
features; some of these features are shared by other group in the Indo-European
family, others are specifically Germanic. Many Germanic features transformed and
even lost in later history.

Map 1. Anglo-Saxon dialect areas

Map 2. Dialects in the Interregnum

4. BEGINNING OF ENGLISH.

Our knowledge of the early history of the inhabitants of Britain is limited. We

know from archeological studies that there were Paleolithic (Old Stone Age )
people here when Britain was still part of the mainland of Europe. The latest of
these people had artistic skill and left drawings on pieces of bone and on cave
walls, mainly of animals, but nowhere is there any remnant of written language
From about 5000 to 2000 B.C. Neolithic (New Stone Age ) people occupied this
land. They were a little taller than the Paleolithic people though still only about
1.52 m in height, slight of build and dark-haired. They reared common domestic
animals, such as cows, sheep, pigs, poultry, dogs and practiced elementary
agriculture.

They were a secretive people and, when the Celts came pressing across Europe and
into the British Isles, they retreated to remote regions. Before the coming of the
Celts these people knew the use of bronze, but they had not learned how to work
iron. Remnants of them survived into Roman times, well into the Christian era, and
physical traces are still found in some small, dark-haired people in Scotland, Wales
and Ireland. Their language has not survived in Britain, but some linguists believe
that the language of the Basques may be the descendant of this ancient non-Indo-
European tongue.
The Celts were originally a vigorous people. They migrated west across huge areas
of Europe in successive waves from 2000 B.C. on. Celtic was the first Indo-
European language to be spoken in Britain. It was the Latinised form of the Welsh
word Brython which gave us in Modern English Briton and Britain. The Celts
pushed the earlier people west and north into remote regions, and then were
themselves pushed west and north by the invading Germanic tribes. Before that
happened Britain became an outpost of the Roman Empire. Julius Caesar had led
expeditions into southern Britain but had left no Roman settlements. In 43 A.D.
Emperor Claudius undertook the conquest of Britain with an army of 40000 men
and about three years had subdued the south-east and central regions. Gradually
England was brought more or less under Roman control. The Roman built a wall,
called Hadrian’s Wall, right across northern England from the Solway in the west
to the mouth of the Tyne in the east.

By this time most of Britain was completely Romanised. The Romans built roads
four main highways leading west and north from London. About twenty cities and
a hundred smaller towns were linked by minor roads. These Roman settlements
had villas with water supplies, central heating systems and often beautiful mosaics,
Roman temples, Roman baths, and a Roman forum. The inhabitants who were
often Romanised Britons, followed a Roman way of life. They dressed in Roman
fashion and used Roman utensils and ornaments. Educated Britons probably spoke
Latin as well as Celtic. The ordinary people unlike those of France and Spain did
not adopt the Latin language. When the Roman troops withdrew, they virtually
withdrew their language. The 400-year Roman occupation left only a few place-
name elements that were passed on to the Anglo-Saxons. The most common was
castra, ‘camp’, which gives the ending -caster as in Lancaster and Doncaster, -
chester as in Manchester and Colchester, and -cester as in Gloucester and
Worcester.

Roman rule lasted nearly 400 years until 410 A.D. when the last of the Roman
troops were withdrawn to defend other parts of the Roman Empire, and finally
Rome itself from the Goths and Vandals. In 449 A.D. a band of Jutes landed in
Britain. The Jutes decided that Britain was a better country than their own
homeland in what is now northern Denmark. They arrived and began driving the
Celts from their homes in Kent and in the southern part of Hampshire and the Isle
of Wight. According to the Bede’s Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, written in the 8th
century, the Saxons began to establish themselves in the rest of southern Britain in
the area that later became the Kingdom of Wessex. In the middle of the 6th century
the Angles started to leave their homes in Schleswig and settle north of the Thames
in East Anglia. As the Angles moved northward, crossing the Humber they
established the northern kingdom of Northumbria as well as the extensive kingdom
of Mercia in central Britain. The Celts were driven west into the uplands of Wales,
Cornwall and Cumbria. Celtic tribes remained only in Scotland and Ireland.

The bulk of the new population sprang from the Germanic invaders,

Though, to a certain extent, they intermixed with the Britons. Gradually the
Germanic conquerors and the surviving Celts blended into a single people. After
the settlement West Germanic tongues came to be spoken all over Britain with the
exception of a few distant regions where Celts were in the majority: Scotland,
Wales and Cornwall. The native population is shown by the fact that the
conquerors borrowed only a handful of Celtic words most of them being place-
name elements. Cumberland is the land of the Cymry (Britons) many rivers are
called by the Celtic name for ‘river’ and ‘water’: Aven, Esk, Usk, Exe, Stour,
Derwent, and Thames are Celtic names, and so are London, York, Dover, Carlisle
and Penrith. Pen is a common element in llace-names in the north-west and in
Cornwall, where it is also found in family names. An old rhyme goes:

Bt Tre-, Pol-, and Pen-

You will know the Cornish men.

The Celtic called their conquerors indiscriminately “Saxons”. Still today the Scots
even Lowland Scots who are not Celtic, call the English, ‘Sassenachs’, the Gaelic
form of ‘Saxon’.

The Anglo-Saxon Invaders.

One reason why Roman Britania disappeared so quickly is probably that its
influence was largely confined to the towns,. In the countryside, where most
people lived, farming methods had remained unchanged and Celtic speech
continued to be dominant

The Roman occupation had been a matter of colonial control rather than large-
scale settlement. But, during the fifth century, a number of tribes from the north –
western European mainland invaded and settled in large numbers. Two of these
tribes were the Angles and the Saxons. These Anglo-Saxons soon had the south-
east of the country in their grasp. In he west of the country their advance was
temporarily halted by an army of (Celtic) Britons under the command of the
legendary King Arthur. .Nevertheless, by the end of the sixth century, they and
their way of life predominated in nearly all of England and in parts of southern
Scotland. The Celtic Britons were either Saxonized or driven westwards, where
their culter and language survived in south-west Scotland. Wales and Cornwall.

The Anglo-Saxons had little use for towns and cities. But they had a great cities on
the countryside, where they introduced new farming methods and founded the
thousands of self-sufficient villages which formed the basis of English society for
the next thousand or so years.

THE Anglo-Saxons were pagan when they came to Britain. Christianity spread
throughout Britain from two different directions during the sixth and seventh
centuries. It came directly from Rome when St Augustine arrived in 597 and
established his headquarters at Canterbury in the south-east of England. It had
already been introduced into Scotland and northern England from Ireland, which
had became Christian more than 150 years earlier. Although Roman Christianity
eventually took over the whole of the British Isles, the Celtic model persisted in
Scotland and Ireland for several hundred years. It was less centrally organized and
had less need for a strong monarchy to support it. This partly explains why both
secular and religious power in these two countries continued to be both more
locally based and less secure than it was elsewhere in Britain throughout the
medieval period.

Since the Romans had left the British Isles the elements of Roman culture and
language which the new invaders learnt in Britain were mainly passed on to them
by the Romanised Celts. They had met Romans in combat, had gone to Rome as
war prisoners and slaves, had enlisted in the Roman troops, and had certainly
traded with Roman, or Romanised Celtic merchants. Thus in a number of various
ways they had got acquainted with the Roman civilization and the Latin language.

Britain experienced another wave of Germanic invasions in the eighth century.

These invaders as Vikings. Norsemen or Danes, came from Scandinavia. In the
ninth century they conquered and settled the extreme north and west of Scotland,
and also some coastal regions of Ireland. Their conquest of England was halted
when they were defeated by King Alfred of the Saxon kingdom of Wessex This
resulted in an agreement which divided England between Wessex, in the south and
west, and the ‘Danelow’ in the north and east.

The Germanic tribes on the continent had undergone a degree of civilization. This
meant they were more peaceful agricultural people, looking for land to settle on as
farmers. Anglo-Saxon way of life was totally different from the Romano-British.
The Anglo-Saxons lived in small agricultural settlements and had no appreciation
of Roman town life. They sacked and burned the cities and allowed the roads to
fall into decay. Romano-British culture, customs meant nothing to them and they
were in no way influenced by them, nor by the Celtic language. After the Anglo-
Saxons settled down they became a farming community. Many of their words and
expressions relating to farming are still in use today:

wood, field, earth, plough, work, sheep, shepherd, cow, ox, dog . Society was
organized in families and small communities with earls. The business of the
community was conducted in the moot or meeting which everyone had the right to
attend, and in which all local affairs were settled after discussion.

However, he cultural differences between Anglo-Saxons and Danes were

comparatively small. They led roughly the same way of life and spoke two
varieties of the same Germanic tongue ( which combined to form the basis of
modern English). Moreover, the4 Danes soon converted to Christianity. These
similarities made political unification easier and by the end of the tenth century
England was one kingdom with a Germanic culture throughout.

5. LINGUISTIC SITUATION IN OLD ENGLISH.

Old English dialects.

The word Anglo-Saxon is a modern revival of a little used term, but it is a

convenient way of referring to the three tribes of Angles, Saxons and Jutes.

The dialects they spoke all belonged to the same Germanic subgroup and were
undoubtedly intelligible, though each had its own characteristics.

Their common origin and their separation from other related tongues as well as
their joint evolution in Britain transformed them eventually into a single tongue,
English. At the early stages of their development in Britain the dialects remained
disunited. Tribal dialects were transformed into local or regional dialects.

There were three principal Old English dialects. Dialects are named after the
names of the kingdoms on the territory of which the given dialect was spoken.
Kentish, a dialect spoken in the area known now as Kent and Surrey and in the
Isle of Wight. It had developed from the tongue of the Jutes and Frisians West
Saxon, the main dialect of the Saxon group, spoken in the rest of England and
south of the Thames and the Bristol Channel, except Wales and Cornwall, where
Celtic tongues were preserved. Other Saxon dialects in England have not survived
in written form and are not known to modern scholars.

Mercia, a dialect derived from the speech of southern Angles and spoken chiefly
in the kingdom of Mercia, thatis, in the central region, from the Thames to the
Humber.

Northumbrian, a dialect spoken from Humber north to the river Forth, and was
used in the rest of northern England and extended some way into lowland
Scotland.

The distinction between Mercian and Northumbrian as local OE dialects testifies to

the foundation of the dialectal division: regional in place of tribal, since according
to the tribal division they represent one dialect, Anglian. The boundaries between
the dialects were uncertain and probably movable. The dialects passed into one
another, and dialectal forms were freely borrowed from one dialect into another.
Throughout Old English period the dialects enjoyed relative equality; none of them
was the dominant form of speech, each being the main type used over a limited
area.

By the 8th c. the center of English culture had shifted to Northumbria, most of the
writing at that time was done in Latin. In 9th c. the political and cultural center
moved to Wessex. Culture and education made great progress there. The West
Saxon dialect has been preserved in a great number of texts than all other dialects
together. Towards the 11th c. the written form of the West Saxon dialect developed
into bookish type of language, which, probably, served as the language of writing
for all English-speaking people.

Changes in the linguistic situation justify the distinction of two historical periods:
from the 5th to the 7th centuries English spoken language consisted of a group of
spoken tribal dialects having neither a written nor a dominant form. At the time of
written OE the dialects had changed from tribal to regional; they possessed both an
oral and a written form and were no longer equal.

Written records and alphabet.

The earliest written records of English are inscriptions on hard material made in a
special alphabet known as the runes. The word rune meant ‘secret’, ‘mystery’ and
denote inscriptions believed to be magic.

There is no doubt that the art of runic writing was known to the Germanic tribes
long before they came to Britain. The runes were used as letters each symbol to
indicate a separate sound. Besides, a rune could also represent a word beginning
with that sound and was called by that word. In some inscription the runes were
found arranged in a fixed order making a sort of alphabet. After the first six letters
this alphabet is called futhark.

The runic alphabet is a specifically Germanic alphabet, not to be found in

languages of other groups. The letters are preferred straight lines Curved lines
avoided; this is due to the fact that runic inscription were cut in hard material:
stone, bone or wood. The shapes of some letters resemble those of Greek or Latin.
The number of runes in different Old Germanic languages varied. As compared to
continental, the number of runes in England was larger. Neither on the mainland
nor in Britain were the runes ever used for everyday writing or putting down
poetry and prose works. Their main function was to make short inscriptions on
objects.

Many runic inscriptions have been preserved on weapons, coins, amulets,

tombstones, rings, various cross fragment. The earliest of Old English runic
inscriptions is on the 5th century Undley bracelet, a small medallion showing two
infants being suckled by a wolf. It has been translated as, “This she- wolf is a
reward for my kinsman”. Two of the best known runic inscription date from the
early 8th century. One is the inscription on the Ruthwell Cross, part of the text of
the Old English poem The Dream of the Rood. The other occurs on the Franks
Casket, a small carved bone box. Both these inscription are in the Northumbrian
dialect. The total number of runic inscription in Old English is about 31.

Old English scribes used two kinds of letters: the runes and the letters of the Latin
alphabet. In the Old English variety of the Latin alphabet i and j were not
distinguished; not were u and v; the letters k, q, x and w were not used until many
years later. A new letter was devised to indicate the voiceless and the voiced
interdental [O] and [o]. The letter a used alone or as part of a ligature made up e.

The most interesting peculiarity of Old writing was the used of some runic
characters, in the first place the runic called “thorn” which was employed
alongside the crossed d, o to indicate [O] and [o] – it is usually preserved in
modern publications as a distinctive feature of the Old
English script. In the manuscripts one more rune was regularly used - “wynn” for
the sound [w]. In modern publications it is replaced by w.

Some runes were occasionally used not as letters but as symbols for the words
which were their names: e.g. for OE daz M for Old English mann (NE day, man).

Letters we no longer use are (ash), p (thorn), J(yogh), and wyn, a letter which
early disappeared, as it wasconfused with thorn. These letters represent the sound
of Modern English [ ]in hat, [O] in thin or [o] in then, the distinction being one of
position rather than written symbol, [j] in young or [g] in get, depending on the
following vowel, and voiceless [ ].

Old English sc was pronounced [ ], as in sceap ‘sheep’ Before vowels [e(:)], [I] and
[I:], c was pronounced [t ] as in cild ‘child’, otherwise it had the sound [k], as in
cyning ‘king’. The long vowel [a:] developed into [ u].

Old English stan becoming Modern English stone, and [u:] developed into [au],
hus becoming house. There are no capital letters or punctuation marks.

If we learn the sounds of the strange letters, and are helped by modern
punctuation, we can begin to understand some of it.

Can you recognize the following?

Fader ure, pu pe eart on heofonum,

Si pin nama gehalgod.

Tobecume pin rice.

Gewurpe pin willa on eordan swa swa on heofonum.

And forgyf us ure gyltas swa swa we forgyfad urum

gyltendum.

And h e gelad pu us on condtnunge

As alys us of yfele. Soplice.

It is not too difficult to pick out we, us, on and to recognize ure ‘oue’, nama
‘name’, willa ‘will’, forgyf ‘forfive’. With a little thought you might also guess
fader ‘father’, heofonum ‘heaven’, eordan ‘earth’, to dag ‘today’ and perhaps even
half ‘loaf’. By now you should have realized that it is the Old English version of
the Lord’s Prayer. The old 2nd person singular thou and thin are still heard today
in the familiar version of the Lord’s Prayer from the Authorised Version of the
Bible.

Old English Phonetics.

All the Germanic languages of the past and present have common linguistic
features; some of these features are shared by other groups in the IE family, others
are specifically Germanic. The Germanic group acquired their specific distinctive
features after the separation of the ancient Germanic tribes from other IE tribes.
Some different features inherited by the descendant languages and other common
features developed later,

Word Stress.

In ancient IE, there were two ways of word accentuation: musical pitch and force
stress. The position of the of the stress was free and movable, which means that it
could fall on any syllable of the word. Later its position in the word was
stabilized. The stress was fixed on the first syllable, which was usually the root of
the word and sometimes the prefix; the other syllables – suffixes and endings –
were unstressed. These features of word accent were inherited by the Germanic
languages. In Modern English the main accent commonly falls on the root-
morpheme, and never shifted in building grammatical forms. The heavy fixed word
stress inherited from PG has played an important role in the development of the
Germanic languages, and especially in phonetic and morphological changes.
Accented syllables were pronounced with great distinctness , while unaccented
became less distinct and were phonetically weakened. The difference between the
sounds in stressed position were preserved and emphasized, whereas the contrasts
between the unaccented sounds were weakened and lost. Since the stress was
fixed in the root, the weakening and loss of sounds mainly affected the suffixes
and grammatical ending. In Old English the words pronounced exactly as they are
written; spelling in Old English was phonetic.

Old English vowels

Sound changes, particularly vowel changes, took place in English at every period
of history. The development of vowels in Early OE consisted of the modification
of separate vowels, and also of the modification of entire sets of vowels. The
change begins with growing variation in pronunciation. The vowels had the
following characteristic features:

1. The quantity and the quality of the vowel depended upon its position in the
word. Under stress any vowel could be found, but in unstressed position there were
no diphthongs or long monophthongs, but only short vowels [a], [e], [I], [o], [u].

2. The length of the stressed vowels (monophthongs and diphthongs) was

phonetic, which means that there could be two words differing only in the length
of the vowel:

metan ( to mete, to measure ) - metan (to meet )

pin ( pin ) - pin ( pain )

god ( god ) - god ( good )

ful ( full ) - ful ( foul )

3. there was an exact parallelism of long and short vowels:

Short: a o e u iy ea eo

Long : a o e u iy ea eo

All the vowels shown here could occur in stressed position. In unstressed
syllable we find only five monophthongs, and even these five vowels could not be
used for phonemic contrast:

i - aniz (NE any )

e - stane, Dat. Sg. of stan as opposed to

a - stana, Gen. pl. of the same noun (NE stone )

o - baron - Past pl. Ind (of beran as opposed to baren

u - talu (NE tale ), Nom. sg as opposed to tale in other cases.

In later the vowels displayed a tendency to positional assimilative changes: the

pronunciation of a vowel was modified under the influence of the following or
preceding consonant ; sometimes a vowel was approximated more closely to the
following vowel.

Old English e consonants

In Old English there were 14 consonant phonemes denoted by the letters

p, b, m, t, ,d, n, s, r, l, [th], c, z, h.

Among the 14 consonant phonemes that existed in Old English there were at least
5 that gave us positional variants which rather wide apart.

.Some of the modern sounds were non-existent. The quality of the consonant very
much depended on its position in the word, especially the resonance ( voiced and
voiceless sounds: half [f] (loaf) - hlaford [v] (lord, “break-keeper) and articulation
(palatal and velar sounds: climban [k] (to climb) - cild [k’] (child).

Grimm’s law & Verner’s law.

The system of consonant phonemes that we observe in Old English involves

certain peculiarities that are typical of the majority of Germanic dialects. The
main peculiarities were mainly accounted for by two linguists – Jacob Grimm and
Karl Verner, or referred to as “Grimm’s Law” and “Verner’s Law”.

The changes of consonants were first formulated in terms of phonetic law by Jacob
Grimm in the early 19th c. and are often called Grimm’s Law. It is also known as
the Fist or Proto-Germanic consonant shift

By the terms of Grimm’s Law voiceless plosives developed in PG into voiceless

fricatives:

p ..> f L. pes; OE fotus; Mod.E foot

t .> [th] tres preis three

k > x cor cordis hairto heart

IE voiced plosives were shifted to voiceless plosives

b > p Lith bala OE pol Mod.E pool

d > t L decem tien ten

g > k genu cneo knee

IE voiced aspirated plosives were reflected either as voiced fricatives or as

pure voiced plosives

bh > v (or b) O Ind bhrata OE bropor Mod.E brother

dh > [th] (or d) rudhira read red

gh > y (or g) hostis giest guest

Another important series of consonant changes was discovered in the late 19th c.
by a Danish scholar, Karl Verner. They are known as Verner’sLaw, Verner’s Law
explains some correspondences of consonants which seemed to contradict
Grimm’s Law, and for a long time regarded as exceptions. According to
Verner’s Law all the early PG voiceless fricatives [ f, th, h ] which arose under
Grimm’s Law, and [s] inherited from PIE became voiced between vowels if the
preceding vowel was unstressed; in the absence of these conditions they remained
voiceless.

Latin pater Old English fader ( father )

Verner’s Law account for the appearance of voiced ficative or its later
modifications [ d ] in place of the voiceless [th ] which ought to be expected under
Grimm’s Law . Later the phonetic conditions that caused the voicing had
disappeared: the stress had shifted to the first syllable.

As a result of voicing by Verner’s Law there arose an interchange of consonants in

the grammatical forms of the word, termed grammatical interchange. Part of the
forms retained a voiceless fricative with a different position of stress acquired a
voiced fricative.

Infinitive Past Tense (sg) (pl) Participle II Mod E

f>b heffen huob huobun gi-haban heave

Old English Grammar.

Morphology.

Old English was closer to present-day German than to Modern English. English
today is an analytical language, that is it relies on word order and use prepositions
to show relationships between words. The dog bit the children shows the normal
order of Subject – Verb – Object. The meaning is entirely changed if the word
order is reversed. The children bit the dog, as there is no subject or object marker,
nor number marker in the verb. Old English was synthetic: that is it showed
relationships between words by inflectional endings. The parts of speech to be
distinguished in Old English are as follows: the noun, the adjective, the pronoun,
the number, the verb, the adverb, the preposition, the conjunction and the
interjection.

There were five nominal grammatical categories in Old English: number, case,
gender, degrees if comparison, and the category of definiteness/ indefiniteness.
Each part of speech had its own peculiarities in the inventory of categories and the
number of members within the category.

Nouns

Noun had already lost some of the endings they had in Common Germanic. There
were four cases for practical purposes: Nominative, Accusative, Genitive and
Dative. Already the Nominative and Accusative plural forms had merged, and in
masculine strong nouns the Nominative and Accusative singular, too. About 75%
of nouns belonged to the strong declension, the rest to the weak declension,
depending on what kind of sound the Common Germanic stem ended in. Gender
followed the Common Germanic pattern, and was often illogical.

Magden ‘maiden’, girl’, wif ‘wife’, bearn ‘bairn, child’ were all neuter, whereas
wifmann ‘woman’ was masculine, because the second element was masculine. The
strong neuter forms were distinguished from the masculine only by their -u ending
in Nominative and Accusative plural. Under certain conditions the final -u was
lost. This resulted in a group of nouns whose form was the same in the singular
and plural.

Some of these were animal names for example deer, sheep, horse and swine.
Another ending that disappeared was –i. This had earlier caused a change of sound
in the preceding syllable from a back to a front vowel in about twenty-five nouns.
Today seven of this type, called mutated plurals, still survive. The seven are:
man/men, woman/women, foot/feet, tooth/teeth, goose/geese, mouse/mice, and
louse/lice.

Most of the weak -n plurals later felt the pull of analogy andfollowed the pattern of
-s plurals. The one true -n plural that survives is oxen. Brethren and children,
originally -r plurals, were reinforced by the addition of -n, becoming double
plurals. The plural form childer was commonly heard from dialect speakers in
Lancashire fifty years ago. Kine, the only plural of cow used in the Authorised
Version of the Bible, added an n to a mutated plural cu/cy. A few other -n plurals
survive in dialect treen ‘trees’ , een ‘ eyes, shoon ‘shoes’. Walter De la Mare, a
twentieth century poet, uses the last for poetic effect in his poem ‘Silver’

Slowly, silently, now the moon

 Walks the night in her silver shoon.

Adjective

As in other Germanic languages there was both a weak and strong declension of
adjectives. The weak declension was used when the noun had some other marker, a
demonstrative or possessive adjective which would show case number and gender.
If there was no such marker the strong form had to be used. So we have se goda
hunta ‘the good hunter’, but god hunta ‘a good hunter’.

OE adjective had three genders and two numbers The category of case in
adjectives differed from that of nouns: in addition to the four cases they had more
case, Instrumental. It was used when the adjective served as an attribute to a noun
in the Dative case expressing an instrumental meaning - e.g.;

Lytle werede ‘with (help of) a small troop’. Like adjectives in other languages,
most OE adjectives distinguished between three degrees of comparison: positive,
comparative and superlative.

Articles

Originally there were no articles in Old English. The definite article developed
from the demonstrative, and had a more emphatic sense than modern the. It was
highly inflected. The indefinite article developed still later. It came from the
numeral one and is only used in this sense in Old English.

Pronouns

Old English pronouns fell under the same main classes: personal, demonstrative,
interrogative and indefinite. OE personal pronouns had three persons, three
numbers in the 1st and 2nd p. and three genders in the 3rd p. The 1st and 2nd p.
used Dative case. It is important to note that the Genitive case of personal
pronouns had two main applications: noun-pronouns could be an object, but it was
used as an attribute or a noun determiner, like a possessive pronoun. The personal
pronoun, because of its frequent use, preserved highly inflected forms. It still had
in Old English the dual verb forms had already been lost. The third person singular
preserved separate forms for masculine, feminine and neuter, but the plural forms
had merged into one for all genders.

Verbs

Verbs in Old English were already much simpler than in most other Indo-European
languages, though much more complex than in Modern English. Inflections were
used to distinguish two tenses, Simple present and Simple past, three persons, in
both singular and plural, and three moods, indicative, subjunctive and imperative.
At an early stages the present and the past endings of the subjunctive merged, and
there was only one singular and one plural ending. There were seven classes of
strong or irregular verbs, and three of weak or regular verbs. Strong verbs showed
a change of tense by a change of vowel in the root syllable, weak verbs by the
addition of a dental suffix. There were about three hundred strong verbs, classified
according their vowel changes.

Weak verbs formed the past singular with -ede, -ode or -de added to the stem. The
past participle had the prefix ge- and the ending -ed, -od, or -d.

fremman ‘perform’ fremede gefremed

luvian ‘love’ lufode gelufod

libban ‘live’ lifde gelifd

During the Old English period many strong verbs went over in the weak or regular
conjugation. All new borrowings went into the weak conjugation, so that now it
has come to be the dominant one.

S y n t a x.

The syntactic structure of Old English was determined by two major conditions:
the nature of morphology and the relationship between the spoken and the written
forms of the language. Syntactic ways of word connection was relatively small. It
was primarily a spoken language, therefore the written forms of the language
resembled a oral speech - unless the texts were literal translations from Latin or
poems with stereotyped constructions. The syntax of the sentence was relatively
simple. In the oldest texts there were numerous instances of coordination and
subordination. The order of words in the Old English sentences was relatively free.
The position of words in the sentence was often determined by logical and stylistic
factors. The word order depended on the order of presentation and emphasis laid
by the author on different parts of the communication.

Vocabulary.

Old English vocabulary was almost purely Germanic; except for a small number of
borrowings, it consisted of native words inherited number of Pre-Germanic words
passed into the Germanic languages including English. Common Germanic words
originated in the common period of history, when the Teutonic tribes lived close
together. Semantically these words are connected with nature, with the sea and
everyday life.

Mona, treow, beard, brodor, modor, sunu, don ,ic, min, pat, twa - NE moon, tree,
beard, brother, mother, son, I, my, that, two.

There are very few Celtic loan-words in the Old English vocabulary. The Celtic
component, combined with a Latin or a Germanic component, make a compound
place-name; e.g.

Celtic plus Latin Celtic plus Germanic

Man-chester York-shire

Win-chester Corn-wall

Glou-chester Salis-bury

Wor-chester Lich-field

Devon-port Devon-shire

Lan-caster Canter-bury

Latin words entered the English language at different stages in Old English history.
Roman contribution to building in words like OE ceal, tizele,coper (NE chalk, tile,
copper). A group of words relating to domestic life by OE cytel, disc, cuppe, pyle
(NE kettle, dish, cup, pillow) Borrowing to military affairs are OE mil, weall,
vallum, strata via (NE mile, wall, a wall of fortifications erected in the Roman
provinces, street or road).

Old English showed itself vigorous and resourceful, well able to cope with the
formation of new words for them. Many were compounds or words made by
affixation. ‘Arithmetic’ was expressed by rimcraft (number-craft), ‘geography’ by
eorthcraft (earth-craft), ‘jeweller’ by gimmwyrhta (gem-worker), intelligence’ by
modhord (mind-treasure), ‘creation’ by frumweor (beginning-work). Old English
mod, which gave Modern English mood, meant ‘mind, courage, pride’. So modig
meant ‘ high-minded’ or ‘bold’, modiglice ‘boldly, proudly’, modignes ‘pride,
magnanimity’, modful haughty’, modles ‘spiritless’.

Common prefixes were a-, be-, for-, ge-, mis-, of-. on-. to-, un-,
 under-, with-. So from settan ‘to set’ we find asettan ‘to place’, esettan ‘to
appoint’, forsettan ‘to oppose’, gesettan ‘to garrison, ofsettan ‘to afflict’ onsettan
‘to oppress’, tosettan ‘to dispose of’, unsettan ‘to put down’, withsettan ‘to resist’.

The prefix with- is added to about fifty Old English verbs, ofer- to about a
hundred. Adjectival suffixes include -ig – ‘y’ as in crafty, -full ‘-ful’ as in helpful, -
leas ‘-less’ as in friendless, -sum ‘-some’ as in handsome, -wis, ‘- wise’ as in
likewise.

Common noun suffixes include -dom as in kingdom, -scip ‘-ship’ as in friendship,

-had ‘-hood’ as in childhood.

6. CHRISTIANITY AND THE GOLDEN AGE.

In 597 A.D. Pope Gregory set about carrying out his promise to bring Christianity
to the Angles. He sent Augustine with a band of about forty monks to their remote
and barbaric island. Fortunately for them they landed in Kent. Later the whole
kingdom of Kent was Christian with Canterbury.

In both Roman and Celtic Christianity the importance of education was

emphasized. By the middle of the 7th century every kingdom in England except
Sussex and the Isle of Wight was more or less Christian and had at least one centre
of learning attached to an important church or monastery. With the adoption of
Christianity and its cultural consequences, the language began to expand. Some
words were simply borrowed from Latin. In the field of religion: abbot, alms, altar,
hymn, martyr;

domestic words: candle, chest, mat, cap, tunic, sock;

different foods: lentil, oyster, pear, oil, trout;

new plants: fennel, rue, mallow, myrrh, lily;

in the field of learning: master, school, grammatical, verse, gloss.

The quality of a language is judged by its literature. It is in literary writing that it

displays its virtuosity and power. Old English has one of the richest literatures of
any Germanic people, unrivalled for centuries. Some of it belongs to the Old
Germanic oral tradition that the Angles, Saxons and Jutes brought with them from
the continent, a literature that celebrates the heroic qualities and warlike nature of
the pagan tribes. The greatest single work in Old English is a poem of this type,
Beowulf. The earliest manuscript dates from around the year 1000, but it is thought
that it was composed in the 8th century. It tells of the heroic deeds of Beowulf,
first as a young man, then as an old warrior, fighting monsters and dragons. It
gives a vivid picture of life in those times in the ford’s hall and on the battlefield,
extolling the qualities of courage, endurance, loyalty and a strong sense of duty
and honor.

Old English poetry was written in lines consisting of two half-lines, following
strict rules of stress and rhythm. There was no rhyme; the half-lines were
connected by a pattern of alliteration of stressed syllables. Poems are rich in
metaphorical synonyms. A boat may be described as ‘sea-rider’. ‘sea-wood’,
‘wave-courser’, ‘curved stem’. The sea is the ‘swan’s road’, ‘whale-bath’, ‘wave-
roller’. Grendel, the monster killed by Beowulf, is the ‘grim monster’, ‘Hell-fiend’,
‘prowler of the wasteland’, ‘creature of evil’, ‘fell-spoiler’, ‘dark death-shadow’.
In its 3000 lines Beowulf has 1069 such kennings, of which only 233 are repeated.
Jaspersen (1909) notes that there are 36 words for ‘hero’, 12 foe ‘battle’ and 11 for
‘ship’.

In the same heroic tradition as Beowulf are two great battle poems, The Battle of
Brunnanburgh and The Battle of Malden. The first celebrates a victory over the
Danes. One of the earliest poems, Widsith, tells of a minstrel’s life in the halls of
kings and famous men. The Seafarer describes the dangers and hardships of life at
sea, but expresses his desire to return to brave its challenge.

In contrast with the heroic elements are the Christian themes that run through other
works. The earliest religious poet known by name is Caedmon. The story is told be
Bede of how, through divine inspiration this humble, uneducated lay brother in the
monastery of Abbess Hild. composed between 657 and 680 A.D. beautiful songs
about creation and other Biblical subjects. The only one has survived is the “Hymn
to the Creator”. This short poem shows how the characteristics of Anglo-Saxon
poetry were applied to the Christian tradition. In its nine lines there are eight
expressions for God, only one being a repetition and all using native resources of
language. Around 800 A.D. Cynewulf, a Mercian poet, wrote Christ, The Fates of
the Apostles, Juliana and Elene, the last two being accounts of the lives of these
saints. A poem which has been described to both Caedmon and Cynewulf, but
probably originates from early 8th century Nothumbria is ‘The Dream of the
Rood’, ‘rood’ being the Old English word for ‘cross’.

These and other works show that the 7th and 8th centuries were truly a Golden Age
of culture in England, with the light of learning burning brightest in the north.
7. THE SCANDINAVIANS.

The Golden Age of northern culture came to an end in 793 A.D. by the Vikings.
Constant raids round the east and south coasts in 835 A.D. Coastal villages and
monasteries were destroyed and burned, valuables and slaves were carried off. The
Vikings were illiterate pagans who set no value on learning. By 870 A.D. they had
put an end to the monastic schools in the north. The whole country plunged again
into ignorance.

Alfred became king of Wessex in 871 A.D. and took up the struggle against the
Dane. He was able to raise a fresh with which he defeated the Danes, forcing them
by the Treaty of Wedmore in 878 A.D. to withdraw north and east behind a line
running between the Thames and the Dee an areas which became known as the
Danelaw. One important condition was that the Danes adopted Christianity, and
their leader, Guthrum, was baptized.

Alfred was appalled by the state of ignorance that the country had fallen during the
previous century. He wrote that hardly any of the clergy in his kingdom could
translate a word of Latin and he did not suppose the situation was any better
elsewhere. Most of the clergy could read English. So he began a new campaign,
this time against ignorance. Not only did Alfred wish to educate the clergy, but he
deliberately used the English language to foster a sense of unity among the people
of the various English kingdom to unite them against the Danes. He started
rebuilding churches and monasteries and re-establishing schools.

At the age of forty he, himself learned Latin so that he could help to translate
works of scholarship and moral teaching into English. He assembled a team of
scholars, who under his direction set about translating, editing and even making
additions to important texts.

Copies were sent to each diocese where the bishops were responsible for re-
educating themselves and their clergy. The they in turn would teach the sons of
better-class families to be literate in English. Boys destined for the clergy would go
on to learn Latin. Alfred died before his ambitious scheme could be fully
developed, but its influence was profound.

Owing to the efforts of Alfred and his scholars, there are today a large body of
work in Old English. This includes the translation of Bede’s great Ecclesiastical
History of the English People, Pope Gregory’s Pastoral Care for the education of
the clergy. The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius, and the History of the
World by the Spanish priest Orosius, to which Alfred made some addition himself.

The ability to deal in Old English prose with abstract and difficulty subjects was
through Alfred’s efforts established in England well in advanced of other west
European countries. It was Alfred who established the writing of the invaluable
record of life in those days, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which continued to be
written for a further two centuries after his death. Winchester, the capital of
Wessex, became the new seat the learning, and the West-Saxon dialect became the
dominant one until the end of the 11th century when the capital moved to
Westminster. If it had not been for the Norman Conquest, West-Saxon would
undoubtedly have been the ancestor of our language today. Throughout his reign
Alfred struggled to hold back the Danes. It must at times have seemed liked
holding back the tide. His efforts kept open the way for the later flowering of
English scholarship which came at the end of the 10th century.

The raids who attacked the east and south coasts were also attacks in the north-
west that came from a largely Norwegian force based in Ireland, the Isle of Man
and the Western Isles Their dialects were very similar, but there were some
differences that are reflected in present-day place names.

As early relations between Anglo-Saxons and Scandinavians were so hostile, it is

not surprising that early borrowings from Scandinavian were few. They related to
boats and battle, and mainly died out in Middle English. After the Danelaw was
established, legal terms were introduced as the Danish system of law more
advanced than the English. The word law itself comes from Scandinavian, and so
do by-law, outlaw, hosting, thrall, more common today in enthrall, and wrong.

Alfred’s in the 9th century allowed time for the Danes to become more civilized,
and convert to Christianity. Alfred’s grandson, Athelstan, won a great victory over
the Danes at Brunnanburgh. After this there were was relative peace, which
fostered the second period of Anglo-Saxon learning. Three great religious leaders,
Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury, Oswald, Archbishop of York and Athelwold,
Bishop of Winchester, started to reform the Church, preaching a return to simple
Christian virtues. By the end of the century monasteries were once again setting
the standard for moral excellence and learning. Manuscripts were once again
copied and circulated and it was in this period that the bulk of Old English poetry
was written down and so preserved.

In this new period of learning more Latin words were taken into Old English.
There were more scholarly and fewer domestic words than among earlier
borrowings. Religious words included : apostlr, cell, cloister, creed, demon, font,
prophet.

Literary words included: accent, decline, history, paper, title. There were also plant
names: coriander, cucumber, ginger, cedar, fig, laurel, and medical terms: cancer,
paralysis, scrofula, plaster. Many words borrowed at this time later fell out of use,
though some were re-borrowed and became assimilated into English.

There was more trouble with the Danes at the end of the 10th century with the
Anglo-Saxon. The influence of the Scandinavian language on English could be
clearly seen, with about 900 borrowings in all. Scandinavian borrowings were of a
different kind from the learned Latin borrowings, which named objects or
expressed new ideas. Anglo-Saxon and Danes shared a common culture, and in
literature and art the Danes were greatly inferior. So these were not learned
borrowings, but everyday words that were heard constantly and were easily
assimilated.

Sometimes the Scandinavian word displaced the Old English one, for example egg,
sister, take, sky. We say window from Scandinavian vindauga, not eyethirl or
eyetrill. Scandinavian cut has restricted the meaning of Old English carve
(originally ‘to cut’ ). Often we have both the Old English and Scandinavian words
surviving with the same or very similar meaning. You may rear or raise children.
You may wish or want to have shoes made of calf-hide or calf-skin. The workman
needs craft or skill to make them. You may feel sick or ill. You may disagree by
saying no or nay. Modern English bloom could equally well be from Old English
bloma or Scandinavian blom. It was the Scandinavian one which meant ‘flower’.
Plough in Old English was a measure of land. In Scandunavian it was the farm
machine the Anglo-Saxon previously called sulh. Typical of Scandinavian words is
the [k] sound. Many words end in [k], for example brink, bank, link, crook, or
begin with [sk], for example sky, skin, skill. The words shirt and skirt are cognate.
Northern dialects still preserve many Scandinavian words: laik, ‘play’, keek
‘peep’, red up ‘tidy up’, flit ‘move house’, get agait ‘got on one’s way’, addle
‘earn’.

When two similar languages are spoken in a community, different inflectional

endings can be a barrier to understanding, and so they tend to disappear. Especially
in the north of England this process was under way in the 10th and 11th centuries.
In the second half of the 11th century, an event took place which was to have an
even more profound effect on the English language than the Scandinavian
invasions – the Norman Conquest of 1066.
8. THE NORMAN CONQUEST

The Normans or ‘Northmen’ came from Normandy or ‘Northman’s land’ and were
originally Vikings.

Many historians see the Norman Conquest as the defeat of rather primitive Anglo-
Saxons by the more cultured French. Baugh and Cable in A History of the English
Language (1978) write:

“The mixture of French culture and Scandinivian vigour produced a most advanced
and progressive people”.

But Barbara M.H.Strang (1970) has a rather different view. She asserts that the
highest culture in Europe at that time was to be found in England, where a
magnificent prose literature and works of scholarship in Latin and English were
being produced, where there were skilful manuscript illustrators, glass-workers and
embroiderers. She writes, “To this shriking but civilized, community, came in
1066 that fresh wave of barbarian Vikings, the Normans. 1066 marks the division
between an age that, if not Golden, is Silver, and one that, if not Dark, is Twilight”.

In 1066 upon Edward’s death, the Elders of England proclaimed Harold Godwin
king of England. As soon as the news reached William of Normandy, he mustered
a big army by promise of land and plunder and with the support of the Pope,
landed in Britain. In the battle of Hastings, fought in October 1066, Harold was
killed and the English were defeated. This date is commonly known as the date of
the Norman Conquest, though the military occupation of the country was not
completed until a few years later.

After the victory at Hastings, William by-passed London cutting it off from the
North and made it Witan of London and the bishops at Westminster Abbey crown
him king. William and his barons laid waste many lands in England, burning down
villages and estates.

A large number of the English aristocracy died at the Battle of Hastings. Their
lands and those of all who opposed him were confiscated by William and given to
his Norman followers. The St Albans Chronicle of 1072 tells us that out of the
twelve earls in England at that time only one was English. The King’s Court,
Parliament and the Law Courts consisted entirely of Normans. The English
archbishops and bishops were replaced by Normans. For two hundred years all the
important people in all spheres of life were Normans; most of them had lands and
positions on both sides of the Channel, and it was usually those on the French side
that were considered more important.

Following the conquest hundreds of people from. France crossed the Channel to
make their home in Britain. Immigration was easy, since the Norman kings of
Britain were also dukes of Normandy, about a hundred years later, took possession
of the whole western half of France, thus bringing England into still closer contact
with the continent. French monks, tradesmen and craftsmen flooded the south-
western towns, so that not the higher nobility but also much of the middle class
was French.

The Norman Conquest was not only a great event in British political history, but
also the greatest single event in the history of the English language. For about 150
years little was written in English. Latin was the language of the Church and of the
universities. French was the language of government, law, administration and
culture. Then from the middle of the 13th century there was an increasing number
of sermons and prayers, songs and romances, letters, wills and other documents
written in what we may now call Middle English.

Although French continued to be the prestige language, the language of aristocracy

and the learned, as English continued to adapt and flourish it began to oust French
in general usage.

There was no the special tie between England and Normandy. Henry’s favoritism
towards his French half-brothers and brothers-in-law angered many of his subjects
and created an anti-French feeling. The Hundred Years War with France, which
began in 1337 further encouraged anti-French feeling.

England never stopped being an English-speaking country. The bulk of the

population held fast to their own tongue: the Lower classes in the towns and
especially in the country-side, those who lived in the Midlands and up north,
continued to speak English and looked upon French as foreign and hostile. Since
most of the people were illiterate, the English language was almost exclusively
used for spoken communication.

At first the two languages existed side by side without mingling. Then, slowly and
quietly, they began to permeate each other. The Norman barons and the French
town-dwellers had to pick up English words to make themselves understood, while
the English began to use French words in current speech. A good knowledge of
French would mark a person of higher standing giving him a certain social
prestige. Probably many people became bilingual and had a fair command of both
languages.

Norman-French had undoubtedly become less popular. At the time of the Conquest
it was one French dialect among a number, all of equal status. In the 13th century
Parisian French became the dialect with the most prestige, and Norman-French as
spoken in England was considered very provincial. English writers of French
found it necessary to apologize for their language. Aristocratic families sent their
sons to Paris to have the “barbarity” removed from their speech. Chaucer in the
Prologue to the Canterbury Tales writes:

After the scole of Stratford-atte-Bowe,

For French of Paris was to hir unknowe.

Rather than be mocked for speaking an inferior French, it was better to speak
good English. In 1250 there had appeared a little textbook by Walter of Bibbes
worth to teach English children the French language, showing that it was no longer
acquired as a mother tongue . At the end of the century in Oxford Fellows spoke
English instead of Latin.

In the second half of the 14th century there came a great outpouring of English
Literature. Writers who knew both French and Latin chosen to write in the
vernacular, the language of ordinary people. Wycliff translated the Bible into
English. Beautiful short poems and songs were written in English.

The three hundred years of the domination of French affected English more than
any other foreign influence before or after. The French influence added new
features to the regional and social differentiation of the language. New words,
coming from French, could not be adopted simultaneously by all the speakers of
English; they were first used in some varieties of the language, namely in the
regional dialects of Southern England and in the speech of the upper classes, but
were unknown in the other varieties. Later the new features adopted from French
extended to other varieties of the language.

The use of a foreign tongue as the state language, the diversity of the dialects and
the decline of the written form of English created a situation extremely favorable
for increased variation and for more intensive linguistic change.

9. MIDDLE ENGLISH
 Middle English was a time of great historical consequence: under the
growing capitalist system the country became economically and politically unified;
the changes in the political and social structure, the progress of culture, education
and literature favoured linguistic unity. The growth of the English nation was
accompanied by the formation of the national English language.

Middle English was a time of great changes at all the levels of the language,
especially in lexis and grammar. The local dialects were mainly used for oral
communication and were little employed in writing, literary prestige grew, as
English began to displace French in the sphere of writing, as well as in many other
spheres. It was the time of the restoration of English to the position of the state
and literary language and the time of literary flourishing. The written records in
Middle English testify to the growth of the English vocabulary and to the
increasing proportion of French loan-words in English. The phonetic and
grammatical structure had incorporated strengthen the fundamental changes of the
preceding period. Most of the inflections in the nominal system – in nouns,
adjectives, pronouns – had fallen together. The verb system was expanding, as
numerous new analytical forms and verbal phrases on the way to becoming
analytical forms were used alongside old simple forms.

Borrowings.

English absorbed two layers in lexical borrowings: the Scandinavian element in the
North-Eastern area and French element in the speech of townspeople in the South-
East. Before 1200 there was little borrowing of French words into English.

There were 1000 words. The greatest number of borrowings flooded in between
1250 and 1400. There were still significant numbers appearing in the next two
centuries.

When the first words began to appear, they reflected the areas of Norman
dominance: castle, tower, prison, crown, purple, oil, Sacrament, saint, grace,
miracle, chapel, prior, justice. Duke and duchess, prince and princess were titles
brought in by the Normans, though the highest titles of king and queen remained
English. So did that of earl, although the earl’s wife became a countess.

The period of greatest borrowing follows the adoption of English by the upper
classes and their transferring of French words into English. Although some of the
words are taken from the Norman-French spoken in England, there are
considerable numbers of words borrowed from Central French. In the field of
administration and government we find: council, chancellor, parliament, treasury,
alliance, treaty;

in law: convict, verdict, judge, jury, evidence, pardon,

punishment;

in fashion: button, cloak, dress, gown, embroidery, petticoat;

in food: appetite, stew, fry, salad, biscuit, jelly, spice;

in learning and the Arts: art, music, paint, sculpture,geometry, grammar, noun,
medicine, surgeon.

Many Old English words were lost, displaced by the French word. Often both
words survived, possibly with a slight difference in meaning or usage. There are
both wish and desire, hearty and cordial, home and residence. Breakfast in English,
dinner and supper are French; town, house, hall are English, village, city, palace
are French; most parts of the body are English, but face and voice are French.
Names of older, humbler crafts are English: baker, miller, shepherd, shoemaker,
waver; those of ‘superior’, more highly-skilled, occupations are French: carpenter,
draper, mason, painter. A well-known passage in Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe
points out that the living animals, looked after by English peasants, are known by
English names swine, cow, sheep. But when the meat is cooked and served at table
to Norman lords it becomes pork, beef, mutton.

French gave many expressions that were direct translations, for example take
leave, draw near, hold one’s peace, come to a head, hand to hand, on the point of,
by heart. Once borrowed, French words began to provide roots from which new
words were made. Gentle appeared in 1225, gentlewoman in 1230, gentleman in
1235, gentleness in 1300, gently in 1330. The Old English ending -ship produced
new nouns like scholarship, companionship. The French suffix -able was added
onto Old English roots to give new adjectives like bearable, lovable. In some cases
there are pairs of closely synonymous words, one from French, the other direct
from Latin, such as eatable/edible, readable/legible, answerable/ responsible.

Latin still provided a source of borrowings into Middle English especially in the
14th and 15th centuries. These were mainly learned words from the written
language. Wyclif’s translation of the Bible introduced a large number, which then
passed into later translations and so into Modern English.
The importance of the Norman Conquest had another source of borrowings into
Middle English: Dutch, Flemish and Low German. Sometimes it is difficult to
know if a word is a borrowing or a native word. Close relations existed between
England her Germanic neighbors. William the Conqueror’s wife was Flemish,
many Flemish mercenaries served in the English army, and the woolen trade with
Holland and Flanders brought their weavers to Britain. Dutch and German ships
traded in English ports.

In the Peasant’s Revolt in 1381, Flemings were killed if they spoke of case and
brode instead of the domination of the French language in England came to an end
in the course of the 14th century. Little by little the Normans and the English drew
together and intermingled. In the 14th century Anglo-Norman was a dead
language; The number of people who knew French had fallen; Anglo-Norman and
French literary compositions had lost their audience and had to be translated into
English.

To the end of the 14th century the English language had taken the place of French
as the language of literature and administration. English was once more the
dominant speech of all social classes in all regions. Many legal documents which
have survived from the late 14th and 15th centuries are written in English: wills,
municipal acts, petitions. In 1363, for the first time in history, Parliament was
opened by the king’s chancellor with an address in English. In 1399 King Henry
IV used English in his official speech when accepting the throne. Slowly English
had supremacy in the field of education. It was ruled that English should be used at
schools in teaching Latin, but it was not untill1385 that the practice became
general, even the universities began to conduct their curricula in English. So
French, like Latin was learnt as a foreign language.

Dialects in Middle English.

The boundaries of the Old English dialects broadly remained in Middle English.
For about three hundred years English had been ignored as a literary language and
was left to developed in each region in its own way with no national standard.

Kentish was still a distinct dialect from the rest of southern English, the north had
its own dialect.

Mercian had divided into the West Midlands and East Midlands dialects, all of
them of equal importance. It was the East Midlands dialect that began to
predominate. There were several reasons for this. Firstly it was spoken in an area
which was the most prosperous in the country and had the greatest density of
population. Secondly it formed a bridge between the very different dialects of
north and south. Most important was its boundaries the two great centers of
learning, Oxford and Cambridge, and the capital city, London. The capital city
commanded considerable prestige, and was the political, commercial and cultural
centre. Visitors to the capital would take the latest modes of speech back home
with them. The East- Midlands dialect was the basis of the legal language that had
become fairly standard on documents throughout the country.

In Middle English the differences between the regional dialects grew. The main
dialectal division in England which survived in later ages with some slight
modification of boundaries and considerable dialect mixture, goes back to the
feudal stage of British history.

In addition to economic, geographical and social conditions, dialectal differences

in Middle English were accentuated by some historical events, the Scandinavian
invasions and the Norman Conquest.

Eastern part of Wales became part of England, while the North and West of Wales
was a principality governed separately. In Middle period the English made their
first attempts to conquer Ireland. The invaders settled among the Irish and were
soon assimilated, a large proportion of the invaders being Welshmen. Though part
of Ireland was ruled from England, the country remained divided and had little
contact with England. The English language was used there alongside Celtic
languages – Irish and Welsh – and was influenced by Celtic.

London Dialects.

The most important event in the changing linguistic situation was the London
dialect as the prevalent written form of language. The history of the London dialect
reveals the sources of the literary language in Middle English, also the main source
and basis of the Literary Standard, both in its written and spoke forms. The history
of London extends back to the Roman period. Even in Old English times London
was by far the biggest town in Britain, although the of Wessex - the main Old
English kingdom - was Winchester. The capital was transferred to London a few
tears before the Norman conquest.

The dialect of London was fundamentally East Saxon, it belonged to the South-
Western dialect group. Later records indicate that the speech of London was
becoming more mixed, with East Midland features gradually prevailing over the
Southern features. The most likely explanation for the change of the dialect type
and for the mixed character of London English lies in the history of the London
population.

In the 12th and 13th centuries the inhabitants of London came from the south-
western district. In the middle of the 14th century London was practically
depopulated during the “Black Death” (1348) and later outbreaks of bubonic
plague. It has been estimated that about one third of the population of Britain died
in the epidemic, the highest proportion if deaths occurring in London. The
depopulation was good and London had over 35000 inhabitants. As a result the
speech of Londoners was brought much closer to the East Midland dialect. The
official and literary papers produced in London in the 14th century. The London
dialect became more Anglian than Saxon in character. The flourishing of literature
which marks the second half of the 14th century testifies to the complete
reestablishment of English as the language of writing. Some authors wrote in their
local dialect far from London, but most of them used the London dialect, or forms
of the language combining London and provincial traits. To the end of the century
the London dialect had become the principal type of language used in literature, a
sort of literary “pattern” to be imitated by provincial authors. Geoffrey Chaucer
(1340-1400) was the most outstanding figure of the time. In many books on the
history of English literature and the history of English Chaucer is described as the
founder of the literary language. Chaucer’s literary language based on the mixed
London dialect is known as classical Middle English. In the 15h and 16th centuries
it became the basis of the national literary English language.

It was in London in 1476 that Caxton set up his printing press, the first to be
introduced into England. In order to be understood by the population as possible,
he used the contemporary speech of the capital in his own works and translations.
The impact of the printing press on a society was enormous. Caxton’s English can
be read for the most part without a gloss. He wrote: “Certainly our language now
used very far from that which was used and spoken when I was borne.” He was
born only twenty-two years after the death of Chaucer, but by the time he died in
1491 English was basically the language we know today.

Phonetics on Middle English.

Developing the printing press at this particular time had one disadvantage that
pronunciation was still in the process of change. English spelling used alternative
forms in order to ‘justify’ lines of type was fairly phonetic. However
pronunciation went on changing.

Consonants are the most stable of sounds and they show little change from Old
English to Middle English, and from Middle English to Modern English. Short
stressed vowels changed only a little from Middle English to Modern English. The
changes were in the difference between northern and southern pronunciation of a
and u, the north preserving the older sounds. In the 15th century the long vowel
and diphthongs changed considerably. This is known as the Great Vowel Shift.

Old English diphthongs had been lost in Middle English, and new ones formed. In
the East-Midlands dialect of Middle English there were seven long vowels, two
more than in Modern English. They were [i:], [e:], [э:], [o:], [o:] and [u:].

The two highest, [i:] and {u:], became diphthongized, then the next vowels moved
up to take their place and so on. There was not sudden changes. Some took two
centuries to complete. Finally we were left with our present vowel system, which
is unlike any Continental system. Modern English life in Chaucer’s time was
written lyf and pronounced like modern English leaf. In Shakespeare’s time it was
written life and sounded more like lafe, before acquiring its present pronunciation.

You can compare the sounds as follows:

Chaucer’s Chaucer’s Shakespeare’s Modern Modern

Spelling Pronunciat Pronunciation Pronunciat Spelling

lyf li:f leif laif life

deed de:d di:d di:d deed

deel dэ:l de:l di:l deal

name na:m nэ:m neim name

mone mo:n mu:n mu;n moon

hous hu:s hous haus house

Most of these sounds still exist in some dialect. In fact the process of vowel change
is so slow. There are phoneticians who do not believe that the process has stopped.
For example, many people today, especially the young, pronounce the words seen
and soon as if there was a short [i] before the ee, and a schwa before the oo. It may
be that by the end of the 21st century another vowel shift have become evident.
 Grammar in Middle English.

It is at this time that some of the differences that distinguish southern and northern
speech were established. As a lower-class, mainly oral language, with few learned
speakers to uphold traditions, English was free to make rapid changes.

In Middle period underwent radical changes. In Old English were the following: -
suffixation; - vowel interchange; - use of suppletive forms, all these means being
synthetic.

In Middle English developed the use of analytical forms consisting of a form word
and a notional word, and also word order, use of prepositions.

In Middle English we observe the process of the gradual loss of declension by

many parts of speech, formerly declined. In Middle period there remained only
three declinable parts of speech: the noun, the pronoun and the adjective.

The distinct noun endings -a, -u, -e were reduced to a uniform -e(schwa). Only the
-s endings of the genitive singular and the plural forms remained.

The -n plural of weak nouns was the usual form in the south up to the 13th century,
but gradually the -s plural spread throughout the country. Many mutated plurals
were lost. Adjectives took the nominative singular form throughout the plural. The
final -e became more a feature of spelling than pronunciation. By Chaucer’s time
the definite article was unchangeable.

Demonstrative this, that, these and those were established, though this was
adopted later in the south than in the rest of the country. Here was a need for
distinctive subject and direct object forms of personal pronouns, and so the
disappearing Accusative was replaced by the Dative, except in the third person
singular neuter form it. They had already replaced hi in Chaucer’s time. Though he
still used hem and here, it was not until the end of the fifteenth century that them
and their became the common forms throughout the country. Dual forms
disappeared by the end of the 13th century.

A third of all strong verbs died out in early Middle English. Some, like burn,
climb, flow, help, walk, went over to the regular weak conjugation. Sometimes two
forms of the past tense survived for a time: holp/helped, clomb/climbed. We still
have a few verbs with dual forms: cloce/cleft, crew/crowed. Past participles were
more tenacious, especially when used adjectivally. Today we have alternative
forms: melted/molten, loaded/laden, shaved/shaven, swelled/swollen. All new
borrowings joined the regular weak conjugation. Today there are only about eighty
common verbs descended from the irregular strong conjugation remaining.

Another simplification was the loss of grammatical gender, resulting from the loss
of endings which marked the gender. Today people are masculine or feminine if
their sex is known, otherwise the neuter pronouns are used; all objects are neuter.

Norman scribes, hearing English, wrote it down in accordance with their own
spelling conventions, as far as they could. Runic letters mostly disappeared. Old
English cw was replaced by qu, as in queen, ht by ght, as in night, c pronounced
[t ] by ch, as in church. So the scribes changed u to o, and wrote come, tongue and
love.

Many strong verbs became weak in the Middle English period. The trend still
continued. Crowd, dread, wade, sprout, bide were among those that changed to a
regular past tense. Some became weak and then reverted to the strong form. So we
find growd, shined, blowed changing back to grew, shone, blew. Blowed is still
used in the exclamation: I’ll be blowed! Some past tenses of strong verbs had a
where today we have o.

Brake, spake, bare, sware are the only forms in the Bible.

In the personal pronoun two developments are significant. The genitive of the
neuter was his, but new forms, it and its, arose. The form it is rare, and its is purely
an extension of the genitive ending -s to it. The form his survives into the
seventeenth century and is replaced by its only towards the end of the period. The
use of ye/you was found already in the fourteenth century. In day-to-day language
you became the dominant form both for the nominative and the oblique cases in
the singular forms thou/thee are retained in poetry and formal writing. Another
pronoun introduced in the 16th century was the relative who. In the 15th century
besides that, which was used for persons. In the 16 century besides being an
interrogative, who began to be used as a relative, probably influenced by the use
of whom and whose.

The comparison of adjectives was not yet definitely established. The –er/-est
inflected forms alternated with the more/most forms in an arbitrary manner. We
can find violenter, honetest, and the ‘double’ forms more larger, most unkindest.
He use of articles differed slightly from today’s. Shakespeare wrote: creeping like
snail, in number of our friends, mile and half, but at the length. His idiomatic use
of prepositions was different: I have no mind of feasting and He came of an errand.
We would say for feasting and on an errand.
The Syntax

This period sees the continued movement towards an analytical language which
increasingly restricts choice in placement of individual parts of the sentence. The
influence of Latin grammar encourages more ‘logic’ in the construction of a
sentence, and more explicitness in linking together its elements. The idea that each
sentence should have a subject and a predicate becomes more dominant. The most
obvious difference between OE syntax and ME is that the word order became more
strict and the use of prepositions more extensive. The structure and the word
phrase became more complicated were stabilized and standardized.

In the course of history the structure of the simple sentence in many respects
became more orderly and more uniform. At the same time it grew as the sentence
came to include complex parts: longer attributive groups, diverse subjects and
predicates and numerous predicative constructions.

The ties between the words in the sentence were mainly agreement with the help of
numerous inflectional endings. Every place in he sentence came to be associated
with a certain syntactic function, it were determined by position. This is
evidenced by the obligatory use of the subject.

In ME the order of words in the sentence became fixed and direct: subject plus
predicate plus object ( S+ P + O ) .

In the 17th and 18th c. the order of words in the sentence was generally
determined by the same rules as operated in English today.

The growth of the written forms of English and the advance of literature
manifested in the further development of the compound and complex sentence.

The Age of Grammarians.

By the end of 16th century it was felt that the language was changing too fast. Poet
Edmund Waller feared that English would not endure as a language. English was
called ‘unruly’, ‘corrupt’, ‘unrefined’’ ‘barbarous’ by men of letters. This was an
age when men wanted order, conformity, especially those of Classical Latin and
Greek. Defoe, the creator of Robinson Crusoe, considered it ‘as criminal to coin
words as to coin money’, Swift, who invented the lands of Lilliput was no inventor
of language. He insisted on the need to ‘correct’ and ‘regulate’ the language.

Three aims were identified by the men of letters:

- to refine the language, freeing it from defects and introducing

improvements;

- to formulate rules which would set the standard for correct usage;

- to fix the language permanently once it had reached the desired form.

Swift deplored the tendency to contrast the sound of the –ed ending of past tenses.
By using such forms as drudg’d, disturb’d, rebuk’d, he complained, ‘we use a
jarring sound’. Swift disliked monosyllabic words considering them ‘the disgrace
of our language’. Many writers throughout the centuries concern that so many
French words were being borrowed.

Addison in 1711 wanted ‘superintendents of our language’, who would ‘prohibit

any French phrases from becoming current in this kingdom, when those of our own
stamp are altogether as valuable. Later Campbell believed that English was ‘in
great danger of being overwhelmed by an inundation of foreign words, than of any
other species of destruction’. French was at that time at the height of its prestige.
No man considered to be properly educated unless he had traveled in France and
could write and could speak language. Early borrowings included envelope,
bureau, pirouette, connoisseur, tureen, casserole. In the later part of the century
came words connected with the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, such
as guillotine, émigré, regime, fusillade, espionage, sortie. Other borrowings
included martinet, nuance, chateau, cuisine, souvenir.

The Italian Academia della Crusca and the Academie Francaise were greatly
admired by English men of letters, but efforts to establish a similar body in
England met with little success. In 1664 the Royal Society had voted to set up a
committee of twenty-two members who would try to improve the standard of
English. This committee, which included Dryden,

Evelyn and Waller, met only a few times. The Royal Society was not really
interested in linguistic studies, and nothing was achieved. A second attempt about
fifty years later, supported by Swift was also unsuccessful, though was not Swift’s
fault. In 1712 he submitted the Earl of Oxford “A proposal for Correcting,
Improving and Ascertaining the English Tongue. There were nominated several
men who would help with this project, was asked Queen Anne for financial
assistance. But Her Majesty became ill and unexpectedly died before the project
could be started. The Earl of Oxford lost political power and the project was
shelved indefinitely.
Dr Johnson once had hopes of ‘fixing’ the English language, in the preface to his
dictionary, which appeared in 1755 he wrote: ‘The French language has vastly
changed under the inspection of the academy and no Italian will maintain, that the
diction of any modern writer is not perceptibly different from that of Bocce,
Machiavel or Caro’. He also declared his belief that the English spirit would not
have taken kindly to the decrees of academicians, which ‘every man would have
been willing, and many would have been proud to disobey.’

Thomas Sheridan in his British Education (1756) expressed his certainty that
setting up an academy to preserve the language ‘could never effectually answer the
end’.

Joseph Priestley in his Grammar (1761) considered an acadeby ‘not only

unsuitable to the genius of a free nation, but in itself ill calculated to reform and fix
a language. We need make no doubt but that the best forms of speech will, in time,
establish themselves by their own superior excellence.

In spite of the controversy about an academy, there was general agreement that
some kind of authority was needed – dictionaries and grammar books that would
establish with certainty the correct forms of English.

In 1582 Richard Mulcaster had written: ‘If were a thinge very praiseworthy if som
one well-learned and as laborious a man would gather all the words which we use
in our Englysh tung…into one dictionary’.

Mulcaster, headmaster of Merchant Taylor’s School, advocated a system of

spelling based largely on usage and common sense, and printed a General Table of
spellings of 7000 words. This did not give meanings of the words.

The first dictionary of English appeared in 1604. So when it was Published the
ground had been well prepared.

Robert Cawdrey published a Table Alphabetical by which people ‘may more

easily understand many hard English words, which they shall hear in Scriptures,
Sermons or elsewhere’. It included 3000 words ‘borrowed from the Hebrew,
Greek, Latin or French with the interpretation thereof by plaine English words’.

For many years only ‘hard’ words were included in dictionaries, no ordinary words
like man or chair, no pronouns, no modal verbs. Gradually ideas developed and
new features were included.

Henry Cockeram’s English Dictionary (1623) included names of gods, devils and
monsters.
Thomas Blount in his Glossographia (1656) was the first to give etymologies. The
first interest in overseas English was shown in Edward Phillips’s New World of
English Words (1678).

Kersey’s New English Dictionary (1702) was written for ‘Young Scholars,
Tradesmen, Artificers and the Female Sex, who would learn to spell truly.

Nathaniel Bailey in 1721 published his Universal Etymological English

Dictionary. In his 40000 words Bailey included dialect, slang and archaic words. A
supplement in 1727 gave stress marks as an aid to pronunciation.

Thirty editions of this dictionary were printed between 1721 and 1802.

Samual Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language was published in April

1755. S. Johnson was not the lexicographer of the greatest English dictionary. He
was a provincial with large gaps in his education. He was a fat, ugly man, blind in
one eye, he was careless in dress and none too particular about personal
cleanliness. He had, however, an immense knowledge of English literature, a fine,
sonorous style of writing at his best, and a ready wit.

The French Academy’s dictionary took forty men forty years to accomplish. In
contrast Johnson achieved his great work for seven years, working alone and for
this magnificent effort he was paid by publisher and his assistants himself. While
Johnson was regulating the vocabulary of English , others were concerning
themselves with the grammar. This was the Age of Grammar Books. Early
grammarians had tried to ‘force the language to the Method and Rules of the Latin
Grammar’ as William Loughton wrote in 1734 in his Practical Grammar of the
English Tongue. This book was popular and went through five editions.

Joseph Priestly’s Rudiments of English Grammar Priestly wrote widely on

science, religion and politics as well as language. In all fields he was a man of
originality and good sense. He recognized that language did not develop according
to the rules of grammarians and constantly emphasized the importance of usage.

Robert Lowth wrote and published Short Introduction to English Grammar.

All writers of grammar book were not scholar, they didn’t teach the public how
they ought to speak and write. An important feature of this period was instruction
in grammar and the books which were written for teachers and schoolchildren.

William Lily’s Latin grammar is a compilation of mixed authorship, which is

based upon the traditional grammar teaching going back to the classical grammars
by Donatus and Priscian It was essentially a manual for teaching, and it was not
speculative or innovative.

Edmund Coote’s The English Schoolemaister (1596) is a typical example of the

kind of schoolbook issued at this time is. Its subtitle is Teaching all his scholars,
the most easie, short, and perfect order of distinct reading and true writing of our
English tongue’.

The public, consisting of the new middle classes, who wished to appear well-
educated. In the early part of the 18th century ‘rules’ were being formulated.

10.DEVELOPMENT OF THE NATIONAL ENGLISH

LANGUAGE.

The formation of the national English language were favored by two great factors:
the unification of the country and the progress of сulture. The 13th century started
with rising the feudal system, and new economic relations began to take shape.
The craftsmen traveled about the country looking for a greater market for their
produce. They settled in the old towns and founded new ones near big monasteries,
on the rivers and at the crossroads. The crafts became separated from agriculture
and new social groups came into being the town middle class, rich merchants,
owners of workshops and money-lenders. There were other striking changes in the
life of the country: while feudal relations were decaying, bourgeois relations and
the capitalist mode of production were developing rapidly. Trade had extended
beyond the local boundaries and in addition to farming and cattle-breeding, an
important wool industry was carried on in the countryside. Britain began to export
woolen cloth produced by the first big “manufactures”.

The new nobility, who traded in wool formed a new class, while the poor artisans
and monastic servants turned into farm laborers and workers.

The changes in the economic and social conditions led to the intermixture of
people coming from different regions and to the strengthening of social ties
between the various parts of the country.

Economic and social changes were accompanied by political unification. England

became a centralized state to the 15th century.
All over the world the victory of capitalism over feudalism was linked up with the
consolidation of people into nations, the formation of national languages.

The 15th century are marked by the rise great interest in classical art and literature,
to the progress of learning and science. The universities at Oxford and Cambridge
(founded in the 12th c.) became the centers of new learning. As before, the main
subject in schools was Latin; the English language as “a rude and barren tongue”
used as an instrument in teaching Latin. Scientific and philosophical treatises were
written in Latin, which was not only the language of church but also the language
of philosophy and science. The influence of classical languages on English grew
and was reflected in the enrichment of the vocabulary. All outstanding
achievements of this great age, the invention of printing had the most immediate
effect on the development of the language, its written form in particular.

The first printer of English books was William Caxton. William Caxton (1422 –
1491 ) was born in Kent. In 1441 he moved to Flanders, where he spent over three
decades of his life. He learned printing and in 1473 opened up his own printing
press in Bruges.The first English book, printed in Bruges in 1475 was Caxton’s
translation of the story of Troy ‘Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye’. A few years
later he brought his press over to England and set it up in Westminster, not far the
city London. About one hundred books were issued by his press and they were
translated and edited by Caxton himself.

Linguistic situation.

The development of trade inside and outside the country was encouraged by
Tudors. English traders set forth on daring journeys in search of gold and treasures.
Under the later Tudors England became one of the biggest trade and sea power.
England became involved in the political struggle of the European countries for
supremacy. More complicated were her relations with France, Spain and Portugal,
in 1588 England defeated the Spanish fleet. In the late 16th century England
founded her first colonies abroad. The contacts of England with foreign nations,
not necessarily friendly, became closer, which had influence on the growth of the
vocabulary. Britain consolidated into a single powerful state, it extended its
borders to include Wales, Scotland and part of Ireland. In Ireland, only the area
around Dublin was ruled direct from England, the rest of the country being Irish or
Anglo-Irish. Despite the weak ties with England and the assimilation of English
and Welsh invaders by the Irish, linguistic penetration continued. In the early 14th
century Scotland’s independence was secured by the victories of Robert Bruce
Feudal Scotland remained a sovereign kingdom until the later Tudors, but the
influence of the English language was grater than elsewhere.

Scotland began to fall under English linguistic influence from the 11th century
when England made her first attempts to conquer the territory.

The mixed population of Scotland -- the native Scots and Picts, the Britons, the
Scandinavians and English - was not homogeneous in language. The Scotch-Gaelic
dialect of the Scots was driven to the Highlands, while in Lowland Scotland the
Northern English dialect gave rise to a new dialect, Scottish, which had a chance to
develop into an independent language. The Scottish tongue flourished as a literary
language and produced a distinct literature as long as Scotland retained its
sovereignty. After the unification with England under the Stuarts and the loss of
what remained of Scotland’s self-government, Scottish was once again reduced to
dialectal status. In the subsequent centuries English became both the official and
the literary language in Scotland.

By the end of the Early New English period the area of England had expanded, to
embrace the whole of the British Isles with the exception of some mountainous
parts of Wales and Scotland, the Isle of Man, Cornwall, and some parts of Ireland,
- though even in most of these regions the people were becoming bilingual.

Literary Renaissance.

The London literary English established since the age of Chaucer, the greatest
name in English literature before Shakespeare. Other writers are referred to as
“Chaucer’s contemporaries”. One of the prominent authors of the time was John de
Travisa of Cornwall. In 1387 he completed the translation of seven books on world
history - POLYCHRONICON by R. Higden - from Latin into the South-Western
dialect of English.

The activity of John Wyclif (1324-1384) was the greatest linguistic consequence.
His most important contribution to English prose was his translation of the BIBLE
completed at the end of 14th century. Wyckif’s BIBLE was copied in manuscript
and read by many people all over the country. Written in the London dialect, it
played an important role in spreading this form of English.

The chief poets were John Gower, William Langland and unknown author of Sir
Gawaine and the Green knight.
The poem of William Langland ‘The Vision Concerning Piers ‘the Plowman’ was
written in a dialect combining West Midland and London features: it is an allegory
and a satire attacking the vices and weaknesses of various social classes and
sympathizing with the poor. It is presented as a series of visions appearing to the
poet in his dream.

John Gower, an outstanding poet was born in Kent, but there are not many
Kentisms in his London dialect. His first poems were written in Anglo-Norman
and in Latin. His longest poem Vox Clamantis is in Latin.

Confesso Amantis, a composition of 40000 lines. It contains a vast collection of

stories drawn from various sources and arranged to illustrate the seven deadly sins.

Thomas More (1478-1535) was a great English humanist. His chief work is
UTOPIA was finished in 1516, it was written in Latin and was the first translated
into English in 1551. In UTOPIA he expressed his opposition to the way of life in
contemporary England, he drew a picture of an ideal imaginary society in which
equality, freedom and well-being were enjoyed by all.

William Tyndale was the second great humanist in England. He was a student at
Oxford and Cambridge and priest in the church. He completed a new English
translation of the Bible. Both in his translations and origin works Tyndale showed
himself one of the first masters of English prose. His works influenced not only on
the language of the Church but also on literary prose and on the spoken language.

The Renaissance in England was a period of rapid progress of culture and a time of
great men.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) is the great dramatists as well as a genius whose

writings have influenced every age and every сountry. Shakespeare’s plays were
greatly admired in the theatres, but in his lifetime less than half of them were
printed. The first collected edition of his plays was the Folio of 1623. His works
give an ideal representation of the literary language of his day.

In addition to the writings of a literary, philosophical, theological, scientific or

official character, produced, copied or printed by professionals. There appeared
new kinds of written evidence: private papers. With the spread of education more
people could read and write. Extant family archives contain papers written both by
educated and uncultivated persons.

The significance of their evidence for the history of the language is obvious: the
writers were not guided by written tradition and could not set themselves any
literary aims. They recorded the words, forms and pronunciations in current use,
putting their own English on paper and reflecting all kinds of dialectal and
colloquial variants. The earlest collections of letters preserved in family archives
are the Paston Letters written between 1430 and 1470 by members of the Paston
family in Norfolk.

In the 16th and 17th centuries new interest in living languages for practical
purposes than the classical ones, led to appearance of one more kind of printed
matter: books of instruction for pupils, didactic works and other compositions
dealing with the English language. Other kinds of publications dealing with
language were lists of words and dictionaries: bilingual dictionaries of classical
and contemporary languages were produced in increasing numbers in the 16th and
17th centuries.

Establishment of English Standard.

The period from 1400 to 1660 is central to the development the standard. The
writing of the Renaissance display a wide range of variation at all linguistic levels:
in spelling, in the shape of grammatical forms and word-building devices and use
of words. Variants are employed as equivalents without any noticeable dialectal or
stylistic connotations. The linguistic ‘freedom’ is widely used because of wide
social and geographical foundations of the literary language, of broad contacts of
the literary language with folklore and oral speech, increasing amount of written
matter produced: scientific and philosophical compositions, letters and diaries,
poetry and literary prose, drama and official papers. We saw different standardized
varieties were formed during the century. Different writing systems available to
individual scribes, based originally on spoken dialects, gradually became mixed
through the different dialect forms.

A standard language is a taught language which each individual has to learn

whatever his or her own pronunciation. The formation of standardized varieties
started in the 14th century. There were three languages still used in England:
English, French and Latin. English acting as the primary spoken language; Latin
and French as the languages of writing. Writing in English was becoming more
common. French and Latin were still used at a spoken level, with French being the
language of the court and Latin the language of the Church. The most important
decision for the English language made by Henry V was his use of English for all
the letters which he sent from France. To the end of the 14th century Latin was
used by humanists in its classical state, it effectively made Latin a dead language.
French ceased to be spoken language and those who wanted to speak it learned it
as a foreign language in the form spoken in France. So English could develop as
both the national written and spoken language of the country.
Establishment of the Spoken Standard.

The growth of the national literary language was the development of the Spoken
Standard. Naturally, there was no direct evidence of the existence of oral norms,
since all evidence came from written sources. Valuable information has been found
in private letters as compared to more official papers, in the speech of various
characters in 17th, and 18th centuries drama and different types of oral speech
made by contemporaries. In the 18th c. the speech of educated people differed
from that of common, uneducated people - in pronunciation, n the choice of words
and in grammatical construction. The number of educated people was growing, and
their way of speaking was correct. There were different recommendations aimed at
improving the forms of written and oral discourse. Some advised people to model
their speech on Latin patterns, others used borrowings and vulgar pronunciation.
Indirectly they testify to the existence of recognized norms of educated spoken
English.

The latter date seems to be more realistic, as but that time current usage had been
subjected. The rules formulated in the prescriptive grammars and dictionaries, and
had their effect not only on the written but also on the spoken forms of the
language.

Spoken Standard does not imply absolute uniformity of speech throughout the
speech community; it implies a more or less uniform type of speech used educated
people and taught as “correct English” at schools and universities. Oral speech
changed under the influence of sub-standard forms of the language, more easily
than the written forms. Many new features coming from professional jargons,
lower social dialects or local dialects first entered the Spoken Standard.

The geographical and social origins of the spoken Standard were in the main the
same as those of the Written Standard:

- the tongue of London and the Universities;

- the age of the English Revolution, further economic progress and

geographical expansion;

- intermixture of people belonging to different social groups;

- flourishing of literature enriched the language.

By the end of the 18th century the formation of the national literary English
language may be regarded as completed.
Establishment of the Written Standard.

During the 14th century different standardized varieties were formed. Different
writing systems available to individual scribes, based on spoken dialects, gradually
mixed through the different dialect forms.

Naturally the war against France promoted English nationalism and brought a huge
wave to support and sympathy for Henry V. From 1417 until his death in 1422
Henry V used English in almost all his private correspondence, which was
produced for him by the Signet Office. The Signet Office was separate from the
great offices of state which were under the control of the Council. The Signet
Office had grown up to write the letters of the king in an individual capacity rather
than in any of his official functions. The Secretary who led the office was in daily
touch with the king and fulfilled the function of a personal private secretary today.
The Secretary was a highly educated official, usually with degree; the office itself
was staffed with trained clerks. Letters issuing from this office were sealed with
the king’s own hand. Consequently we may accept that the decision to write the
letters in English was one taken personally by the king. In this respect Henry V
gave the necessary impetus to establish English as the official written language in
much the same way as Alfred in the ninth century had made the Wessex the
standard language of his kingdom. In both cases what was important is that a king
should give the necessary impetus to establish a certain form of English as the
standard. The importance of Henry’s lead can be understood from the entry of
1422 in The Abstract Book of the Brewers. He decided to keep their records in
English , though this decision is given in Latin. A translation made by the clerk
William Porson is given in the Abstract Book as follows in a modernized spelling.

An interesting feature of the early fifteen century is the flood of literary writing in
English which is produced in manuscript. There is no manuscript of the Canterbury
Tales which can be dated before 1400. The manuscripts of this poem are produced
in great numbers so that there are still over eighty fifteenth-century manuscripts
extant. The development of a canon of English literature would help to establish a
written language. The Standardized spelling itself came out of the Signet Office, it
was extended from there to the Chancery itself. Close contact was maintained
between the two offices. The Chancery was the secretariat of the state in all
departments of late medieval government. It was the largest and most important of
the national administrative offices and was responsible for administrating writs,
customs dues and taxes. The twelve senior clerks were the masters of Chancery
and constituted the first form. The second form had another twelve clerks. So
various were able to copy all documents but they did not have authority to initiate
documents or to sign them. The Chancery had a training system used in the office.
They lived in buildings assigned to the Chancery and were not only kept isolated
from other influences, but also formed an elite in the profession. In developing
writing system Chancery. That acted as a training school not only for its own
clerks, but for those in other situations, the influence of Chancery English would
soon spread throughout London and Westminster. As documents from Chancery
were sent throughout the kingdom and as the English used in its documents carried
with it the prestige attached to the court and royal usage, the influence of Chancery
English was naturally disseminated throughout the country as well. Many
documents issued from the Chancery had legal status, and so had to be written in
an English.

The Chancery Standard is gradually adopted by other writers, who at first take over
some of the spellings and then come to accept more and more. The formation of
standardized varieties was something had started already in 14th century. In 17th
centuries several writers devised new spelling systems for English, these are John
Hart and William Bullokat. J.Hart accepted that there was both recognized as the
best and sufficiently stable to form the basis of spelling. John Hart, both in his
manuscript works and in his published Orthographie (1569) and Methode (1570)
states that the speech of London is the best and most perfect. He qualifies that the
speech found at the Court and in London represents the ‘flower of the English
tongue’.

The grammar of the 18th century were influenced both by the descriptions of
classical languages and by the principles of logic. Hey wished to present language
as a logical system. The main purpose of these grammars was to formulate rules
based on logical considerations and to present them as fixed and obligatory;
grammars were designed to restrict and direct linguistic change.

Samual Johnson was one of those 18th century scholars who believed that the
English language should be purified and corrected. With this object his two
volumes Dictionary Of The English Language included definitions of meaning,
illustrations of usage, etymologies, and stylistic comments. His Dictionary
contained a special section devoted to grammar, which deals with orthography and
accidence. He distinguished between two pronunciations of English words: “one
cursory and colloquial, the other regular and solemn”. The grammatical part proper
is very short.

The grammars and dictionaries of the 18th century succeeded in formulating the
rules of usage, partly from observation but largely from the “doctrine of
correctness”, and laid them down as norms to be taught as patterns of correct
English. Codification of norms of usage by means of conscious effort on the part
of man helped in standardizing the language and fixing its Written and Spoken
Standards.

11. ENGLISH IN THE 19TH – 20TH CENTURIES.

This period was a time of great historical consequences: under the growing
capitalist system the country became economically and politically unified: the
changes in the political and social structure, the progress of culture, education and
literature favored linguistic unity. The growth of the English nation was
accompanied by the formation of the national English language. Caxton’s English
of the printed books was a sort of bridge between the London literary English of
ME period and the language of the Literary Renaissance. The London dialect had
risen to prominence as a compromise between the various types of speech in the
country.

This period was a time of sweeping changes at all levels, in the first place lexical
and phonetic. The growth of the vocabulary was a natural reflection of the progress
of culture in the new society. New words from internal and external sources
enriched the vocabulary. Extensive phonetic changes were transforming the vowel
system,.

In the history of the language, the 17th c. to the end of the 18th c. is called “the
age of normalization and corrections” , which can be defined as received standards
recognized as correct at the given period. The norms were fixed as rules and
prescriptions of correct usage in the numerous dictionaries and grammar-books
published at the time and were spread through educational and writing.

This period had achieved the relative stability typical of an age of literary
flourishing. And had acquired all the properties of a national language. The
classical language of literary was strictly distinguished from the local dialects and
the dialects of lower social ranks. The dialects were used in oral communication
and had no literary tradition, dialect writing was limited. English vocabulary has
grown on an unprecedented scale reflecting the rapid progress of technology,
science and culture and other multiple changes in all spheres of man’s activities.

The literary language comprised a great number of varieties. Literary English

found its ideal representation in the works of English authors of 18th and 19th
centuries. Early Middle English could not excepted centre to set a standard in
speech. Consequently each area developed its own regional peculiarities, and a
very large number of distinct dialects grew up. The descendants of these dialects
are still spoken today. There is nowhere else in the English-speaking world that has
so many different dialects in so small a space as in Great Britain. ‘Dialects’
suggests not only the accent that belongs to a particular area, but special features of
vocabulary, grammar and idiom.

In 1889 “The Present English Dialects” by Alexander John Ellis was published.
He divided the country into forty-two areas. A few years later Joseph Wright began
publishing his English Dialect Dictionary (1905). Now in England four out of five
live in towns. The inhabitants may be drawn from a wide area of the surrounding
countryside, including several dialect areas. Physically people move about more
this age. Newspapers, radio, cinema, telephone and TV have all helped to level out
regional differences in speech. Educational developments have also influenced
local speech. Although by no means all teachers use Receive Pronunciation RP,
especially in primary schools most of them speak an educated local variety of
English which has the effect of smoothing out the broader elements in their
pupils’speech. The most obvious dialectal divide is between north and south.
Northern speech has never raised the vowel sound in words such as hat, cap and
man, no lengthened it in bath, pass and after. The same open front [a] is used in
every case. Even educated Northerners may use a short vowel instead of the long
[a:]. Not only sounds but words are vary also.

What is called a cowshed in one region, in others may be a cowhouse, shippon,

byre or stable. In Berkshire three villages within a few miles of each other have
different names for an outer garment worn in winter. In Kintbury it is commonly
called a greatcoat, in Boxford a topcoat, and in Cold Ash an overcoat.

In many dialects verbs have been regularized, though not in the same way in all
dialects. Some have the present tense ending in -s for all persons: I goes, we goes,
you goes and they goes, as well as he, she and it goes. Others have lost the -s in the
third person singular, and use go as the only form. For a large number of speakers
in different parts of England the past tense of come is comed. Pronouns are not
always the same as in Standard English. In one place we may be the form for both
the subject and object: we saw you, you saw we.

All large cities have their own distinctive speech, a mixture of all the influences,
historical, geographical and social that have affected it over the years.
 Three varieties of English regional dialects nowadays in Great Britain
distinguished from Standard English – Scottish, Welsh and Irish.

Scottish

In the fifth century most of the inhabitants of Scotland spoke Gaelic, a Celtic
language introduced from Ireland. When the Angles came they over-run the south-
east of Scotland up to the Firth of Forth and made it part of the Kingdom of
Northumbria. In 1060 a large numbers of English, who fled from William of
Normandy were welcomed to Scotland. A tradition to speak English as well as
Gaelic at the Scottish court was established. During the history of the country,
there were long series of conflicts between England and Scotland. Their language
develop[ed differently from any varieties of English. Poetry, sermons, letters and
diaries were written in Older Scottish Tongue. But its Golden Age from the end of
the 14th century to the beginning of the seventeenth c. they began to adopt the
culture of the south. The Scottish aristocracy engaged English tutors fir their sons
to enable them to get rid of their provincial accent and idiom. This practice still
continues today. The sons of many upper-class Scots families go to English Public
Schools and speak upper class English without a Scottish accent.

In the 19th century the adoption of Standard English by Scottish writers was
matter of necessity. Sir Walter Scott was anxious to preserve the heritage of
Scotland. But to achieve the international fame that roused this interest, he had to
write his novels in Standard English, only the lower-class characters speaking a
form of Scots dialect. R.L.Stevenson, Treasure Island, has no connection with
Scotland, but other novels have a Scottish setting. He, too, uses Standard English,
except for certain Scottish characters. In his poetry he uses Scots dialect words.

Certain structural features differ from English. Past tenses and past participles
ending in -ed or -t in English have the sound it in Scottish, as in troublit and keepit.
Negatives are used differently. So cannot becomes canna, do not becomes dinna
and does not becomes doesna, often pronounced [dizni].

Some Scottish words are survivals from Old English which have been lost in
modern English. Ken ‘know’ comes from cennan, wee ‘very small’ from waeg,
burn ‘small steam’ from burna, neep ‘turnip’ from naep. Bairn ‘child’, gar ‘cause’.
Borrowings from Gaelic include whisky, from the Gaelic words meaning ‘water of
life’. There are some French borrowings into Scottish Bonny ‘pretty or handsome’.
Petticoat tails may still be eaten in Scotland. They are shortbread biscuits.
The English spoken in the Highlands is different from that of Lowland Scotland.
This is not a development from an older form of English. It is spoken as a foreign,
translated from the native Gaelic.

Welsh English

At the beginning of nineteenth century the majority of Welsh

people still spoke Welsh, and few of them English. By the end of the century only
two thirds could speak Welsh and most were be-lingual. Today only 20% of the
population speaks Welsh, and the number of those speak Welsh is unimportant.
Wales is officially bi-lingual, with all road signs and official notices in both Welsh
and English. In many schools all classes are conducted in Welsh, and for many
jobs the ability to speak welsh is required. He annual Eisteddfod, a festival of
Welsh poetry and music established in the twelfth century, has helped the language
to flourish, and now a popular TV channel in Welsh is also helping.

Modern Welsh has borrowed many words from English. After brecwast ‘breacfast’
a Welshman may go off to his busnes ‘business’ or ffatry ‘factory’ by bws ‘bus’
or on a beisicl ‘bicycle’. On his desc ‘desk’ are papur ‘paper’ and inc ‘ink’ and
perhaps a lamp. Welsh borrowings into English are few. Crag ‘a rough rock’ is the
oldest Welsh loan word. One word that has spread into many languages and that
might have first been introduced into English by Welsh sailors is penguin. The
word is found in accounts of sixteenth century travels., and is thought to be made
up of pen ‘head’ and qwyn ‘white’.

Despite the close political, educational and legal ties with Wales, it is only recently
that the English have penetrated Wales in significant numbers. Consequently, with
no lengthy tradition of ordinary people speaking English, there have not been
phonological and grammatical developments such as distinguish Scots and Irish
English from the mother language. Like the Northern English the Welsh use [a] for
RP for long [a:] of dance, after, pass. They use pure vowels [e] and [o] in place of
RP diphthong [ei]. The vowel in words such as but and come is short.

What is most distinctive about a Welsh accent is the intonation with its constant
musical rise and fall that is found nowhere else in Britain.

In common with many dialect speakers, the Welsh often use the form of the past
participle instead of the simple past tense as in: He never done it. Singing to herself
she was. Another is to start a sentence with There’s. There’s a nice day.
Probably because so many people in the same village share the same surname,
Jones being overwhelmingly the most common, it was a characteristic of the
Welsh to add another name. This was usually a reference to the person’s
occupation. So they might speak of Jones the Fish, Jones he School and Jones the
Post to distinguish between the fishmonger, the teacher and the postman. As fewer
people live in villages today, this practice is perhaps less common.

Irish English

The English first invaded Ireland in 1171 in reign of Henry II. Anglo-Norman
families settled in the area of south-east Ireland that became known as the ‘Pale.
From this there is the expression beyond the Pale applied to anything or anyone or
unacceptable. These early settlers absorbed Gaelic culture and speech and turned
their backs on England. A law was passed in 1366 that tried to force all
Englishmen in Ireland to us English surnames, speaks English and follow English
customs, or else forfeit their lands.

When James I came to the throne he granted large tracts of land in the north of
Ireland to Protestant settlers from the Scottish Lowlands. This started problems
have continued up to he present day, as these new comers did not integrate with the
Irish nor learn their language.

Like other Celtic languages Irish Gaelic is in decline. In 1800 it was spoken about
3.5 millions out of a total of 5 million. During the years Gaelic was confined more
and more to the remote and poorer rural communities, and English was spoken in
the towns. ‘English was seen as the key to economic prosperity, and
schools discouraged, or even punished, the use of Gaelic. Today Irish Gaelic is an
official language of the Irish Republic and its use is encouraged in schools.

Gaelic has influenced the idiom of Irish English. A well-known Irishism is to be

after doing. The sentence: He’s after writing a letter means that he has just finished
writing it. The auxiliary do is used with the continuous form of the verb, as in: I do
be living in Dublin . A farmer at a cattle market commen:

There’s a great buying on the cows today. A friend might enquire about somebody
who has been ill: How does he get his health now? Let is used in commands: Let
you open the door. Word order may follow the Gaelic pattern: It’s ready they are.

There are a few loan words from Irish Gaelic. Some have only Irish associations:
shamrock, the emblem of Ireland; shillelagh, the traditional Irishman’s stick,
banshee, a wailing ghost that announces a death, colleen, an Irish girl. One of the
few words that have lost their particular Irish associations is brogue in the meaning
of a type of heavy shoe. Brogue is also used to mean a heavy Irish accent. An Irish
name that has found its way into almost every European language is Houlihan. A
family of that name, well-known for their loud and lawless behavior, were the
original hooligans.

Irish Gaelic lacks words for yes and no. When asked if she would like a cup of tea,
an Irishwoman might answer: Indeed I would, surely. On the other hand the
negative I would not may give offence as sounding rude and abrupt.

The Irish have a particular way of adapting English words. A few idioms are
particular to Northern Ireland. They have not come from Gaelic, but have
developed from English. One of them is putting an unattached but at the end of a
phrase or sentence , where normally you would hear though , as in: I never went
there but. Another is the use of from instead of since or from the time that;

He has worked there from he left school. Whenever may have the simple meaning
of when, as in: She bought it whenever she was living in Belfast.

The pronunciation of Irish English vowels shows noticeable characteristics. Irish

speakers pronounce leak, meat and sea like lake, mate and say. The popular Irish
name Michael sounds like Moikle, and ‘I’d like to try’ comes out like ‘ ‘Oi’d loike
to troy.

The Irish are known not only for their essily recognizable accent, but also for their
particular brand of logic. There have been many eminent Irish writers. Some like
Synge, O’Casey and Joyce have used an Irish idiom. Others such as Swift, Shaw
and Becket are in their language indistinguishable from Standard English writers.
English Literature would be the poorer without the contribution of Irish writers of
both types.

Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar in 1805 established British supremacy and gave

Britain control of the oceans. In those days that effectively meant control of most
of the world’s trade. British ships sailed freely round the world, ever seeking new
markets and new spheres of influence. They carried British Sailors, traders,
explorers, settlers, legal administrators and army personnel to every continent, and
convicts to some of them.

Words were being imported from an ever larger number of languages. From India
came a number of Hindustani words which have by now been thoroughly
assimilated into English: cashmere, pyjamas, polo, gunkhana, dinghly, loot, thug.
There were also others that had specific reference to Indian life, such as amah,
topi, dhobi, tonga. Khaki and purdah came by way of Hindustani from Persian.

Sanskrit contributed x zyoga, nirvana and swastika, then a good luck emblem
withouit its present ugly connotations. Tamil gave us patchouli and Sinhalese beri-
beri. Arabic borrowings refer mainly to things Arabic: yashmak, wadi, jehad,
loofah, only the lst becoming well-known. From Turkish we took fez, kismet,
bosh and macramé. From Chinese we borrowed kow-tow, chin-chin (the greeting
), loquat and oolong; from Japanese hara-kiri, samurai, rickshaw, geisha, and the
only one pass into more extended use, from Maori kiwi(the Bird); This is only a
small selection of the exotic borrowings that came into English from the east.

The 19th century introduced more French words into English than at any time
since Mediaeval days. They mostly belong to the arts , fashion and food, with
some political terms. In the realm of the arts we find atelier, aquarelle, baroque,
rococo, repertoire, matinee, premiere, genre, cliché . Fashion terms include blouse,
crinoline, negligee`, lingerie, trousseau, décolleté, suede. The continued superiority
of French cooking is acknowledged in borrowings such as café, menu, gourmet,
restaurant, chef, puree, mayonnaise, mousse. Political and diplomatic words
include communiqué, rapprochement, communism, entente, debacle, impasse,
dossier, prestige. A relatively small number are now so thoroughly Anglicised that
they are no longer thought of as borrowings, for example blouse, flair and
restaurant.

Italian provided us especially with words connected with music, including piccolo,
diva, sestet, sonatina, vibrato, scherzo. In other fields were borrowed mafia,
vendetta, fiasco, replica, inferno, risotto and spaghetti, which in Italian is plural but
in English is singular.

Among Spanish borrowings are cafeteria, patio ,tango, camisole, guerrilla.

German gave us poodle, kindergarten, lager, seminar, poltergeist, paraffin,

rucksack..

From Dutch we took the nautical terms taffrail and flense, and via Afrikaans terk,
spoor commando,and aardvark, the first animal listed in English dictionaries.

More significant than the improving of foreign borrowings was the exporting of
English into other lands. A map of the British Empire at its most extensive after
World War I shows about a sixth of the land surface colored pink, the colour used
for Britain and its Empire. This area included Canada, the West Indies and British
Guiana in the New World: Nigeria, the Gold Coast (Ghana), Sierra Leone and
Gambia in West Africa; South Africa, South-West Africa (Nambia), Australia and
the New Zealand and many small territories scattered about the globe. It was home
to about a quarter of the world’s population and was truly the “Empire on which
the sun never set”.

The ‘empty’ lands of Canada, Australia and New Zealand attracted settlers from
the British Isles to go and make a permanent life for themselves there, establishing
these countries from the beginning as English-speaking areas. Their white
population grew to the end of 19th century to several millions by the end of the
19th century and increased more rapidly in the 20th century.

Similarly in West and East Africa where there were many different languages
within one country, English came to be the common language of the educated
classes. The variety of English exported to the colonies was largely.

In the countries which were once part of thr British Empire many different kinds of
English have developed, and are still developing. These may be influenced, among
other factors, by the native language of the country, the original accent of the
British settlers and the relations between natives and British. Within each country
there are variations in speech from Standard English, or something very near it, to
the broadest of local dialects that would not be understood anywhere else.

Australia

In 1768 Captain James Cook claimed both New Zealand and Australia as British
territory. Two years later, when he landed, he kept a notebook of useful Aboriginal
words, so that later explorers and settlers would be able to communicate with the
natives. A number of native words were adopted into English. Besides the
controversial kangaroo, there were names of other animals:

Koalo, wallaby and wombat; names of birds included budgerigar, kookaburra and
currawang; names of trees included boree and coolabor. About a third of all
Australian place names are of Aboriginal origin: Wollongong, Toowoomba,
Wogga Wogga, Oodnadatta..

As in America, too, old words were put to new uses or adapted to new conditions.
Farmers ran sheep or cattle stations, not farms; a creek was not an inlet of the sea
but a stream, paddock, a small pasture in England.

Many of the words and expressions now regarded as typical Australian had their
origin in English dialect.
New Zealand

As early as 1790 there were a few English settlers in New Zealand, but it was not
established officially as a colony for another fifty years. By this time its white
population was about 2000. By 1900 it had grown to around 750000. Unlike
Australia, New Zealand was a free colony, most settlers came from urban lower
classes as those in Australia. This explains the close resemblance between the
accents. In that part of the South Island that was settled mainly by Scots, there is
the voiceless w of ‘when’, and the pronunciation of r after a vowel that is known as
the ‘Southern burr’.

The original inhabitants of New Zealand are the Maoris, a different race of people
from the Australian Aborigines. So any borrowings from the native languages into
English are very different. There are extremely few Maori borrowings and the only
one that has gained currency outside the country is kiwi. This was for many years
only used for the bird that gave New Zealanders their nickname.

Words with a particular New Zealand flavor include bach ‘week-end cottage’,
section ‘housing plot’, tramping ‘hiking’ and line ‘road’.

Canada

British people can seldom distinguished Canadians from Americans. In their

speech Canadians often prefer to use an American word: gas ‘petrol’, truck ‘lorry’.
Sometimes they prefer British word: tap, braces and porridge instead of American
faucet, suspenders and oatmeal. They use British spelling in colour and theatre.

A very distinctive feature of Canadian speech is the idiomatic use of eh at the end
of a phrase or sentence. You might hear a Canadian say:

“I was walking down the street, eh, when I saw a friend of mine, eh, So we stopped
for a chat, eh”.

In general the further west one goes in Canada, the more the British influence has
persisted, as communities tend to be more isolated and more traditional and British
features occur more often among the better-educated and the older generation.
Many early settlers in Canada, however, came over the border from the United
States and never used British English.
Young Canadians prefer to use the American idiom seeing it as more up-to-date
and dynamic.

South Africa

British involvement in South Africa dates from 1795 and the country came under
British control in 1806. In 1820 immigrants from Britain were encouraged to settle
there with grants of land in the eastern Cape. English became the official language
in public life, law and education, replacing Africans, in 1822.

In the area of the Cape British immigrants from the south of England and London
were in the majority. The most outstanding characteristic of South African speech
is the raising of the vowel [a] to [e], so that mat sounds like met. When more than
one consonant ends a word, the final one is usually lost, so text becomes tex.

Many Afrikaans words are used in South African English. One of the best known
today, familiar not just in English but in other languages, too is apartheid. A few
words have become part of the English language without reference to their
background. Such are: commando, commander, spoor, and trek.

In a country of 25 million lacks and 4,5 million whites of whom nearly 3million
are Afrikaners, English is the language of a minority, of the white minority. Most
educated black South Africans speak English but not Afrikaans.

The West India

In the early seventeenth century the notorious ‘triangular trade’ between Britain,
the west coast of Africa and the New World began. In Africa able-bodied men and
women were rounded up throughout a widespread area in which many different
tribal languages were spoken. They were herded together on the slave ships and
transported to the sugar and cotton plantations of the West Indies and the southern
States of America. It was deliberate policy to separate speakers of the same
language as much as possible, to prevent them from getting together. To allow
them to communicate with each other and with masters, a kind of pidgin English
developed. When children are brought up using such a language as their only
mother tongue, it becomes a ‘Creole’.

A feature of pidgin and creoles is that inflections disappear. The third person
singular from the present tense has lost its s ending; He go,

She go, It play. There is no plural marker: three book, and no possessive marker:
the woman hat. The verb to be is omitted in the present continuous tense and in
other usage: I going now, She a fine woman. An unchanging be used with the
Present Participle to indicate continual action: Every day they be coming.
Pronouns are also simplified, one form being used for all cases. So me is often
used as the subject: Me go, we, he and she can be the object: She see we, They
give it to he. These same forms are used for the possessive: This we country, She
in she house, and the reflexive: We did it we-self. The Accusative form used for
the first person singular me only. Perhaps it is simply to rhyme with the others. In
Guyana the interior of the country is covered in tropical forest, called bush. There
are vast areas of forest and so the expression like bush is used to indicate large
amounts. She have troubles like bush.

Besides the unfamiliar grammatical usage and vocabulary, West India

pronunciation often makes the language unintelligible to other English speakers.
Louse Bennet writes poetry in her native Jamaican dialect

Meck me get it straight Mass Charlie

For me noh quite undastan.

Yuh gwine kill all English dialect

Or jus Jamaica one?

( Let me get it straight, Mr Charlie, for I don’t quite understand.

Are you going to kill all English dialects or just the Jamaican one?

This poetry illustrated a problem encountered by all writers of West India English
– how to write it down. Louse Bennett writes: meck, undastan and gwine, which
adequately represents the local sound of make, understand and going, but she does
not write dialect, Jamecka and wan, which would better represent the sounds of
dilect, Jamaica and one?

Dr Hubert Devonish would like to see street signs in creole: NO TON RAIT, KIP
LEF, NO ENTA, NOPAAK BITWIIN DEM SAIN YA.

(‘No right turn,’ ‘Keep left’, ‘No entry’, ‘No parking between these signs’.

‘Nation language is to be taught in schools as many West Indians wish, who is to

determine the standard spelling. Young blacks in Britain, are educated in Standard
English and they hear, read and speak it every day. They are bi-lingual and must
remain so to function effectively within their environment.
 India

England’s contact with India began in the sixteenth century and four Hindustan
were recorded in England before 1600, including raj.

In the early seventeenth century the East India Company was founded and
established itself in Madras, Calcutta and a little later Bombay. By the end of
eighteenth century the Company controlled many aspects of administration in
India, and the British influence was reinforced by the work of missionaries. In
1813 the East India Company was disbanded and India became officially part of
the British Empire.

During these two centuries many India words passed into the speech of the British
in India and number of them became part of the general English vocabulary. The
materials chintz, tussore, dungaree, jute and cashmere have no sense of foreignness
about them. Other words accepted as completely English include cot ( first military
use, then a young child’s bed) bungalow, polo, juggernaut.

Dozens of others are familiar, though their foreign background may be recognized.
The include food terms: curry, kedgeree, chuney, chapatti;

names of animals: cheetah, panda, mongoose; and their habitat, the jungle; clothes
worn in India: sari, topi, dhoti; people and positions: rajah, maharaja, sahib, guru.

There are over 1600 languages and dialects in India, including fourteen official
one. No single language is spoken by more than 16% of the population. Thomas
Macalay, the historian, who was president of the Indian Committee for Public
Instruction, proposed that a class of Indians should be educated to be ‘interpreters’
between us and the millions whom they govern. His proposal was welcomed both
by the British and by Indians who saw this as a means of advancement.

English has been spoken in India for about three hundred years because of this and
because of the large number of speakers involved it is inevitable that local usages
should have developed, just as they have in countries where English is the Mother
Tongue.

One inevitable characteristic is the introduction of Indian words and phrases an

English sentence. Many magazines are written in English which is full of clichés.
The following sentence is typical: Princes Rupanjali was beautiful to behold and
her voice was like the babbing brook. Office English has its own jargon. A caller
might ask: Is Mr Biswas on his seat? And be told: No, he is out of station. Please
leave your good name and call back after some time. In translating phrases from
Hindi some very colourful expressions result, as in greetings: I bow my forehead,
or Bless my poor havel with the good dust of your feel.

There are grammatical and syntactical peculiarities. Like many foreign speakers of
English, Indians say: I am doing it since six months. They answer Yes to a
negative question when English people would use No.

Professor M.P.Jain of the Indian Institute of Technology has studied the

Indianisation of English. He is concerned that some of his students cannot
understand textbooks written in Standard English or American. The practice of
rewriting them in an Indianised English has grown up. This he sees undesirable as
it may lead to the English spoken and written in India becoming unintelligible to
the rest of the world.

English should have stopped being an official languages in India in 1965. The
Indian construction of 1950 recognized fourteen official Indian languages of which
Hindi was to be the first. English would be used temporarily until everyone had
learned Hindi. But the states that did not speak Hindi had no wish to promote its
privileged status. So thirty years after deadline, English is still being used. Out of
16000 newspapers, 3000 are printed in English, including some of the most
prestigious with the greatest circulation in every state. A great number of papers is
printed in Hindi, but they are not so widespread as the English-language ones.
Politicians may make speeches in the local language to a live audience but
when they go on television to address the whole nation they speak English.

India is uniquely placed to make the learning of English there an attractive

alternative for Third World students for whom studying in Britain or the USA
would be too expensive or politically undesirable. Dr N.C.Narang of Nehru
University, New Delhi, says ‘We are helping the cause of English in a big way.
This is no more the cause of England or America, it’s the cause of the world’.

Singapore

The small island of Singapore has a population of about two and a half millions,
whose native languages are mainly Chinese, Malay and Tamil. All are encouraged
to learn both to speak and write English. In eighties the top people in
administration were sent on courses to improve their English, mother-tongue
speakers of English were brought into schools, broadcasting was modeled on BBC
English. At a less formal level, the people have their own very different languages,
influenced by the the various native tongue, and generally known as “Singlish”.
PART II

Exercise 1. Read and translate the following text. Make a grammar and vocabulary
analysis.

Ohthere’s account of his first voyage

Ohthere sade his hlaforde, Alfrede cynin3e, pat he ealra Northmonna norpmest
bude. He cwath pat he bude on pam lande norpweardum wip pa Westsa. He sade
peah pat pat land sie swipe lan3 norp ponan; ac hit is eal weste, button on
feawum stowum stycce-malum wiciath Finnas, on huntothe on wintra and on
sumera on fiscape be pare sa.

Sade - said cynnin3e - king

Ealra - all Northmonna - Norman

Lande - land peah - though

Swipe - swinpe stycce - to stock

Ohthere’s account of his first voyage

Ohthere told his lord, king Alrfed that he lived the furthest north of all
Norwegians. He said that he lived in the north of Norway on the coast of the
Atlantic. He also said that the land extends very far north beyond that point, but it
is all uninhabited, except for a few places here and there where the Finns have
their camps, hunting in winter, and in summer fishing in the sea.

Exercise 2. Read and translate the following text. Make vocabulary analyze of it.

From the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. A.1013

On tham aftran 3eare pe se arcebiscop was 3emartyrod, se cynin3 3esette
Lyfine biscop to Cantwarabyri3 to tham arcestole; and on pissum ylcan 3eare,
toforan pam monthe Augustus, com Swe3en cynnin3 mild his float to Sandwic,
and wende pa swithe rathe abutan Eastenglum into Humbra mupan, and swa
upweard andlang Trentan, othhe com to 3enesburuh; and pa sona beah Uhtred eorl
and ealle Northhymbre to him; and eall pat folc on Lindesi3e, and siththan pat
folc into Fifburhingum, and rathe pas eall here be northan Watli3a strate and him
man sealed 3islas of alcere scire.

Afteran - after 3eare - year

Was - was cynin3 - king

Cantwarebyri3 - borough monthe - month

Swithe - swinps Eastglum - East Anglia

Andlang along up-weard - upward

Sona - soon beah - bow

Eorl - earl ealle - all

Fifbur3um - Five strate - street

Man - man sealed - sold, sell

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. A.D. 1013

The year after that Archbishop Elfeah was martyred, the king appointed lifing to
the archiepiscopal see of Canterbury. And in the same year, before the month
August, came King Sweyne with his fleet to Sandwich; and very soon went about
East-Anglia into the Humber mouth and so upward along the Trent, until he came
to Gainsborough. Then soon submitted to him Earl Utred, and, and all the
Northumbrians, and all the people of Lindsey, and afterwards the people of the
Five Boroughs and soon after all the army to the north of Walting-street;
Exercise 3. Read the poem and point out the alliteration in each line.

Compare the OE text with its translation into Mod ER. Point out synonyms. Make
a grammatical and phonetic analysis of the underline words.

A Bookmoth

Moththe word frat; me pat puhte

Wratlicu wyrd, ps ic pat wundor 3efra3n,

Pat se wyrn forweal3 wera 3ied sumes

Peof in pystro, prymfastne cwide

Ond pas stran3an stapol. Stal3iest ne was

Winte py 3leawra pe he pam wordum sweal3.

Translation

A mouth ate words; that seemed to me

A curious event, when I that wonder learnt,

That the worn swallowed up the word (tale) of someone

of men, -- a thief in darkness, -- glorious speech (words)

and its strong foundation. The thievish guest was not

at all cleverer (when) he those words swallowed.

Exercise 4. Read and translate the following text, and analyze only the underline
words.

Travisa

About the language of the inhabitants

As it is i-knowe how meny manere peple beep in pis ilond, pere beep also so many
dyvers longages abd tonges; nobeles Walshe men and Scottes, pat beep nou3t i-
medled wip oper naciouns, holdep wel nyh hir firste longage and speche; but 3if
the Scottes par were somtyme confederate and wonede wip pe Pictes drawe
somewhat after hir speche; but pe Flemmynges pat wonep in pe weste side of
Wales havep i-left her straunge speche and spekep Saxonliche i-now. Also
Englische men, pey hadde from the bygynnynge pre manere speche, norperne,
sowperne, and middle speche in pe myddel of pe lond as pey come of pre manere
peple of Germania, nopeles by comyxtioun and mellynge first wip Danes and
afterward wip Normans in meny pe contray longage is apayred, and som usep
straunge wlafferynge, chiterynge, harrynge and garrynge grisbayting.

i – know - known meny - many

peple - people pis - this

ilon - island pere - there

dyvers - diverse longage - language

tonges - tongue pat - that

oper - other nacion - nation

speche - speech somtyme - sometime

side - side straunge - strange

hadde - had bygynn(ynge) - beginning

sowperne – southern afterward - afterward

Travisa

About the languages of the inhabitants

It is known how many kinds of people live on this island, here are also as many
diverse languages and tongues, nevertheless, Welshmen and Scots that are not in
the least mixed with other nations, hold very near their first language and speech;
except that the Scots who were once confederate and dwelled in the west side of
Wales have left their foreign speech and speak quite like Saxons. Also Englishmen
had from the beginning three kinds of speech, Northern, Southern and middle
speech in the middle of the land, as they came from three kinds of people of
Germany; nevertheless by mixing and mingling first with Danes and afterwards
with Normans in many respects the country language is impaired, and some use
strange stammering, chattering, snarling and grating gnashing of teeth.

Exercise 5. Read and translate the following text, and analyze only underline
words.

From Chaucer's Prologue to his “Canterbury Tales”

ab. 1384 – 1400

Whan that Aprille with his shoures ssoote

The droghte of March hath perced to the roote, shoure

And bathed every veyne in swich licour,

Of which vertu engendred is the flour;

Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth

Inspired hath in every holt and heeth

The tendre cropes, and the yonge sonne

Hath in the Ram his halve cours y-ronne,

And smale foweles maken melodye,

That slepen al the nyght with open ye-

So priketh hem nature in here corages-

Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,

And palmers for to seken straunge strondes,

To ferne halwes, couthe in sundry londes.

whan - when shoures - shower

soote - sweet droghte - drought

perced - pierce roote - root

swich - such vertu - virtue

flour - flower heath - heath

yonge - young sonne - sun

smale - small seken - seek

(y)-roone - run sundry - sundry

londes - land thanne - then

From Chaucer’s Prologue to his “Canterbury Tales”

1 When in April the sweet showers fall

And pierce the drought of March to the root, and all

The veins are bathed in liquor of such power

As brings about the engendering of the flower,

5 When also Zephyrus with his sweet breath

Exhales an air in every grove and heath

Upon the tebder shoots, and the young sun

His half-course in the sign of the Ram has run,

And the small fowl are making melody

10 That sleep away the night with open eye

(So nature pricks them and their heart engages)

Then people long to go on pilgrimages

And palmers long to seek the stranger strands

Of far-off saints, hallowed in sundry lands.

Exercise 6. Read and analyze Sonnet 153, W. Shakespeare

Cupid laid by his brand, and fell asleep

A maid of Dian’s this advantage found,

And his love-kindling fire did quickly steep

In a cold valley-fountain of that ground;

Which borrow’ d from this holy fire of Love

A dateless lively heat, still to endure,

And grew a seethihg bath, which yet men prove

Against strange maladies a sovereign cure.

But at my mistress’ eye Love’s brand new-fired,

The boy for trial needs would touch my breast;

I, sick withal, the help of bath desired,

And thither hied, a sad distemper’d guest,

But found no cure: the bath for my help lies

Where Cupid got new fire – my mistress’s eyes.

Сонета 153.

Свой факел уронив, красавец Купидон

Заснул. Одна из дев Дианы подхватила

Огонь любви и вмиг светильник опустила

В холодный ключ воды, но не погас там он.

Из пламени любви священный ключ мгновенно

Впитал бессмертный жар на вечные года,

И стала для людей целительна вода

От злобных болестей, жестоких, как измена.

 Зажегши факел вновь от глаз, любимых мною,

Для пробы мальчик им меня коснулся вдруг.

Я исцеленья ждал душой моей больною

От теплых вод, куда тянул меня недуг.

Но исцеленья нет. Ключ животворный льется

В очах возлюбленной, где пламя вновь смеется.

Exercise 7. Read the following extract from W.Shakespeare “Hamlet”.

Make a complete phonetic, grammar, vocabulary analysis of underlined words.

William Shakespeare, Hamlet

Oph. What means this my Lord?

Ham. Marry that munching Mallico, it meanes mischiefe.

Oph. Belike this show imports the argument of the play.

Ham. We shall know by this fellow

(Enter Prologue) The Players cannot keepe, they’l tell all.

Oph. Will a tell vs what this show meant?

Ham. I or any show that you will show him, be not

You asham’d to show, heele not shame to tell

You what it means.

Oph. You are naught, you are naught. Ile mark the play.

P r o l o g u e: For vs and fo r our Tragedie

Heere stooping to your clemencie,

We begge your hearing patiently.

Ham. Is this a Prologue, or the posie of a ring?

Oph. Tis breefe my Lord.

Ham. As woman loue.

William Shakespeare, Hamlet.

Oph. What means this, my Lord?

Ham. Marry, this is miching mallecho; it means mischief

Oph. Belike this show imports the argument of the play.

Enter Prologue

Ham. We shall know by this fellow: the players cannot keep

Counsel; hey’ll tell all.

Oph. Will he tell us what this show meant?

Ham. Ay, or any show that you’ll show him: be not you

ashamed to show, he’ll not shame to tell you want it

means.

Oph. You are naught, you are naught: I’ll mark the play.

Prologue: For us, and for our tragedy Here stooping to your clemency We
beg your hearing patiently.

Ham. Is this a prologue, or the posy of a ring?

Oph. Tis brief, my lord.

Ham. As woman’s love.

Офелия: Что это значит, мой принц?

Гамлет: Это крадущееся малечо, что значить «злодейство».

Офелия: Может быть эта сцена показывает содержание пьесы?

Входит П р о л о г
Гамлет: Мы это узнаем от этого молодца; актеры не умеют хранит
тайн, они всегда все скажут.

Офелия: Он нам скажет, что это значило то, что они сейчас

показывали?

Гамлет: Да, как и все то, что вы ему покажете, вы не

стыдитесь ему показать, а он не постыдится сказать вам, что это значит?

Офелия: Вы нехороший, вы нехороший! Я буду следить за представлением.

Пролог

Пред нашим представлением.

Мы просим со смирением.

Нас подарить терпением. (Уходит)

Гамлет: Что это: пролог или стихи для перстня?

Офелия: Это коротко, мой принц.

Гамлет: Как женская любовь.

(перевод М.Лозинского)
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